The famous Nature Index is getting very influent. But what is it about? It’s a very special ranking, based on the number of articles published in few high quality scientific journals. Those 82 journals on the list have a very strong international impact on science. This ranking is drawn up for various sectors, for public institutions, for foundations, hospitals, and also for the private sector; individual disciplinary and geographical areas can also be taken into account. It's updated monthly and covers a 12-month time window.

Let's analyze the position of Padua, considering the interval from February 1, 2018 to January 31, 2019. The university of Padua is the second place in Italy, with an average of 0.11 articles per professor per year. In Europe, out of 1,023 universities that have published at least one article in the journals examined, Padua ranks 70th with 253 articles published. On a global scale, Padua reaches the 186th place, out of a total of 3,964 universities.

Considering only the publications on Nature and Science, the two major international and generalist magazines, the university of Padua ranks first in Italy, 25th in Europe out of 441 universities, and 140th out of 1,148 universities worldwide. The only flaw of the Nature index, if we’re going to find one, it’s about not considering the number of active professors in an institution, but it only bases its data on the absolute number of articles. The risk is to benefit those institutions that have a higher number of professors.