Scripps Research ranked top U.S. nonprofit scientific institute for second consecutive year

June 25, 2019


La Jolla, CA - Scripps Research is the top nonprofit scientific institute in the United States for producing high-quality research, according to the 2019 Nature Index Annual Tables, based on discoveries published in leading scientific journals.

In addition to receiving the No. 1 U.S. ranking and No. 5 global ranking in the category encompassing nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), Scripps Research ranked fourth globally in chemistry and fifth for life sciences.

The annual rankings, published June 20, “highlight the institutions and countries which dominated research in the natural sciences in 2018,” according to Nature.

“To be ranked the top nonprofit scientific institute in the country and fifth in the world is tremendous validation for the work we do every day to advance human health,” says Jamie Williamson, PhD, Scripps Research’s executive vice president of Research and Academic Affairs. “The credit goes directly to our talented team of scientists in California and Florida whose research continually opens the door to new paths of discovery and, in many cases, new life-saving medicines.”

The Nature Index Annual Tables show calendar-year output in 82 prestigious journals—and reveal the countries, institutions and companies that are leading the way in publishing high-quality global science. The Nature Index is compiled by Nature Research, part of Springer Nature.

This is the second year Nature Index has released tables ranking nonprofits and NGOs, which include scientific organizations such as Scripps Research that are not connected to a university or government agency. The institute also topped the nation in last year’s list and was fifth in the world. Both this year and in 2018, Scripps Research also was the only organization the nonprofit/NGO category to make the top 40 among institutions of all sizes and types in the United States.

Scripps Research’s global ranking of fifth landed it behind several much larger organizations in Germany and Russia; but the smallest of these is nearly ten times the size of Scripps Research. The rankings are not adjusted to account for the size of different institutions.

In May 2019, Nature Index ranked Scripps Research second in the world and first in the United States among stand-alone scientific institutes for biomedical research.

And previously, Scripps Research was ranked the overall most influential research institution in the world by the Nature Index 2017 Innovation supplement, a separate focused ranking. That ranking was based on the Normalized Lens Influence Metric, which measures the influence an institution’s research has on innovation by calculating the citations of its research articles in patents owned by third parties, rather than those owned by institutions themselves.


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