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Planning a Move? Try Tokyo, Boston, or Singapore City

Oct 21, 2010

Which world city is home to the most quality scientific research? According to statistics Nature has compiled, it depends — to some extent — on how scientific impact is quantified. As part of a news feature, Nature outlines the top cities for scientific research according to journal, publication, and citation metrics. In 2009, researchers in Boston published the most papers in Science, Nature, and PNAS (314, 247, and 857, respectively). Investigators in New York authored the second-most papers in Nature and PNAS in 2009 (166 and 454), while scientists in San Francisco authored 133 Science papers that year. Between 2006 and 2008, Tokyo took the top spot for total publications — its researchers pumped out 92,063 articles. Scientists in London produced 90,626 publications in that same period. Citation calculations from 2000 to 2008 show that Singapore City has seen a surge in citation impact. Nature dubs Austin a "rising star," as its researchers seem to "favor quality over quantity." On the flip-side, Beijing's "surging research output hasn't been matched by quality," according to Nature.

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