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The first Nature Index tables in the applied sciences make for fascinating reading, and are the result of work stretching back more than two years to select a group of journals (and conferences) in this important subject area.
Unlike previous journal selections for the Nature Index in the natural sciences and health sciences — where small panels of scientists decided which journals to include — the 25 applied-sciences journals and conferences for which this initial ranking were selected following a survey of the research community.
The journals and conferences selected for the applied sciences are not final. We are inviting feedback on the proposed list, and the approach used for the survey, before fully integrating the applied sciences into the database. (This first iteration of the applied sciences ranking is presented separately from the full database on the Nature Index website.) It is also worth noting that seven of the journals in the proposed applied-sciences category are already included in the Nature Index as natural-science journals.
However, these tables in the applied sciences do mark a significant step on the path to two major changes that we are proposing for how the database is put together.
The first refers to the survey. The 4,176 researchers who took part were from a range of disciplines and fields across the natural, health, applied and social sciences. They were asked to list the publication venues where they would most like to publish their most significant research (defined as the kind that embodies the highest quality and/or has the potential for substantial academic, societal or innovation impact).
This means that we received responses about journals and other publication venues across the disciplinary spectrum, not just the applied sciences. The survey can therefore be used to review the entire list of Nature Index journals and run periodically to ensure the list is up to date. How often we run the survey and review is yet to be determined, but this is another aspect of the changes where we encourage the community to give us feedback via our applied-sciences launch.
The second proposed change to the way the Nature Index operates relates to how we categorize broad subject areas. At present, most journals in the database are assigned to one of five subject areas — four natural-sciences subjects (chemistry, physical sciences, biological sciences, and Earth and environmental sciences) and health sciences. All of the primary research articles in those journals are categorized under the relevant subject heading. The exceptions are the five journals that we class as multi-disciplinary: Nature, Nature Communications, Science, Science Advances and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Research publications in these journals are assigned to subjects (sometimes more than one) at the article level.
Although assigning subjects at the journal level makes it easier to achieve broad disciplinary balance in the database, the data suggest that this is an arbitrary approach. It can be argued that all journals are (or are becoming) multi-disciplinary to some degree. Take data on one Nature Index journal — ACS Nano — currently classed as being in the natural (physical) sciences (meaning all its articles are classed as being in this subject) but which we’re proposing to move to applied sciences. Data from Dimensions using the ANZSRC subject categories, however, shows that although a third of its articles in 2024 were in engineering, one quarter were in chemical sciences and 16% were in biomedical and clinical sciences.
Moving towards subject categorization at the article level for all journals in the database might present a more accurate picture of subject mix. It may create challenges in terms of subject balance and tracking a country or institution’s output in various broad fields over time, but would also make it easier to spot fluctuations in research trends within journals.
If enacted, we hope that these changes — a regular review of journals using a community survey and article-level subject categorization — will reflect the evolution of the research landscape, which is already very different from when journals were first selected for the Nature Index in 2014.
