On November 27, 2009, Institute of Scientific & Technical Information of China announced the Statistics of Chinese Scientific and Technical Articles in 2008, Beijing. SJTU’s SCI papers ranked second among the national universities, with significant increase in cited SCI papers. The statistics showed that its papers of various types came out in front among the national universities.

In 2008, SJTU had SCI 2736 papers, a substantial increase of 405 over the previous year. It is the first time for SJTU to be No. 2 other than No.3 among national universities since 2005 while Zhejiang University remains No. 1 among national universities. EI papers are 2734 which is 14 less than the previous year, and continues to be No.4 nationally. ISTP papers are 1132 with an increase of 148 over the previous year and remains No.4 nationally. MEDLINE papers are 1385 which increases by 191 over the previous year and remains No. 3 nationally. National journal papers are 8478 which increases by 449 over the previous year and remains No. 1 among nationally universities.

In 2008, the internationally cited papers of SJTU are 2905 and the total cites 8740 which respectively increase by 602 and 2366 over the previous year, moving up one place to fifth nationally. The accumulated cited SCI papers during 1999-2008 are 9080 and cites 62560 which respectively increase by 2201 and 19212 over the previous year, moving up three places to fourth nationally. In 2008, Institute of Scientific & Technical Information of China made statistics for the “well-done” (more than the world citation mean of the papers in its discipline) papers for the first time. SJTU had 362 papers which accounts for 13.2% of the total number of SCI papers, ranking third nationwide while Zhejiang University and Tsinghua University respectively rank the first and second.

SCI papers of some subjects of SJTU ranked highest in the country. 645 papers in medical discipline ranked No. 1 for the first time; 192 papers on biology remained No. 5 nationally; papers in material sciences were 208, ranking No. 6 nationally; 64 papers on environmental sciences ranked No. 7 and 329 papers in physics subject ranked the sixth.

The data above shows that in the background of building the world-class university, the university has strengthened the connotation building and the basic research support to encourage teachers to engage in high-level scientific research; it has also actively created a relaxed academic atmosphere to advocate the innovation spirit of exploring freely, being pioneering and advancing bravely in science. Inspired by various measures, the basic research standard and ability of the university have been substantially enhanced with a steady growth in the number of scientific papers and significant improvement in the quality of the papers.