For its publications in the prestigious academic research Nature Index, which measures the high quality of research published in a select list of international journals of very high impact, the School of Physics of the Universidad Industrial de Santander reached a prominent place among the best in Colombia.

The publications were registered in the period between March 1, 2021, and February 28, 2022, and its location in the Nature Index positions this year the School of Physics in third place in the country thanks to the activity of its researchers, whose performance went beyond the national scope and focused on research advanced in 99.76% in international collaboration.

Of the 247 articles published with the participation of Colombian universities and tracked by Nature Index, the share of Colombian participation was 26.76. Of these, 182 articles corresponded to physical sciences (share 14.67); 43 to biological sciences (5.97); 25 to environmental and earth sciences (5.69), and 10 to chemistry (2.71).

According to this index, the country’s leading research institutions in terms of articles published according to the Nature Index are the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, with 106 articles and 5.93 of share; the Universidad de Los Andes, 42 articles (share 5.02), and the Universidad Industrial de Santander (UIS) 9 articles (share 2.64).

The 9 articles published by the UIS had a share of 2.64 of the total number of researchers. Of these articles, 8 corresponded to physical sciences (share 2.57), and one article in biological sciences (0.08).

UIS research in physical sciences was published in the journals Advanced Functional Materials, European Physical Journal C, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Physical Review B, and Physical Review Letters. In turn, in Biological Sciences there was one publication in Nature Communications. (See the table below).

For example, the article published in the journal Functional Materials, entitled ‘Engineering of Ferroic Orders in Thin Films by Anionic Substitution’, had the participation of three universities and six authors, one of them from the UIS, which gives a quota of 0.17 out of 1.00 for the UIS. While the article ‘OSIRIS: A new code for ray tracing around compact objects’, published in European Physical Journal C, had the participation of 5 authors, all from the UIS, so its share was 1.00.

International publications associated with researchers had, in order, collaborations with Universidad de Los Andes de Mérida (Venezuela), West Virginia University, Russian Academy of Sciences, University of Salamanca, University of California San Diego, University of Liege, University of California Berkeley, Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers, the National Institute of Nuclear Physics and the Institute for Astroparticle Detection and Astroparticle Technologies.

The countries with the greatest number of collaborations by the percentage of share with researchers from Colombian universities during this period were: the United States (31.18%), United Kingdom (11.91%), Germany (11.25%), Italy (9.77%), France (7.82%), Spain (7.27%), Switzerland (6.27%), Russia (5.64%), Brazil (4.84%) and China (4.04%).

In this way, “although we are below the largest universities, at the School of Physics of the Universidad Industrial de Santander we are in the fight thanks to the work of the researchers who have led us to be among the three best in the country at the moment”, said the professor of the School of Physics Luis N. Núñez.