——WFC of USTC ranks the fourth place among overall national universities and institutions, second only to Peaking, Tsinghua and Nanjing University. WFC in physics and chemistry are No.4 and No.7, respectively.

According to the latest publication of Natural Index on 17th, Dec, USTC has made significant contributions to promote Hefei’s collaboration. WFC (Weighted Fractional Count) of Hefei ranks No.5 in China and the article account (AC) is 696 between 2012 and 2014, however, USTC’s WFC is 517, which is six timers more than that of Hefei Institutes of Physical Science(CAS). Obviously, USTC is the main driving force to stimulate collaboration.

USTC has sent many elites to overseas universities and institutions since the reform and opening-up. Besides that, a lack of local research institutes to cooperate with drives USTC to seek for international collaboration on state of the art scientific research, especially on physics and chemistry.

GUO Guoping, a professor of Physical department, believes that “International partners are crucial to explore out frontier studies”, therefore, he and his colleagues often cooperate with oversea researchers to promote theoretical development based on experimental results. Take an instance, his recently research results published on Physics Review Lettersabout the application of graphene in quantum communication was the outcome of working with scientists from the United States and Japan. Guo also states that policy support plays critical factor, the pursuit for science rather than money drives scientists to collaborate.

USTC, co-funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Ministry of Higher Education, this unique characteristic advance its relationship with CAS. In 2014, the collaboration factors between those two as high as 136.43, besides, they have co-authored published on over 68 journals that comprise the Nature Index.

Notes*

WFC: Weighted Fractional Count which takes into account individual authors' contributions to articles and the over-representation of some fields of science.

(REN Muqing , FAN Qiong , USTC News Center)