LONDON - The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) is at the top place among the world's leading institutions for high-quality scientific research, according to the Nature Index 2018 annual tables released on Thursday.

Besides CAS, Max Planck Society, French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers, University of Tokyo, University of California Berkeley (UC Berkeley), University of Cambridge are also included in the top 10 of the list.

As for the specific sector of academic institutions, China's Peking University and Tsinghua University makes it into the global academic top 10. Meanwhile, Nanjing University has climbed from 21 to 13, and the University of Science and Technology of China has made its way to 18, from 27.

Among the leading 100 academic institutions in the 2018 annual tables are 44 from the United States and 16 from China. Britain and Japan contribute seven each, with six from Germany, four from Switzerland and three from Canada, according to Nature Index.

Overall, almost 90 percent of the 83 academic institutions from China in the top 500 have improved their positions in the last year, compared to just about 45 percent of the 135 from the United States.

The global picture is changing, and Chinese institutions are gaining their place, Nature Index quoted Marijk van der Wende, a professor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, as saying.

The Nature Index is a database of author affiliation information collated from research articles published in an independently selected group of 82 high-quality science journals.

The database is compiled by Nature Research. The 2018 annual tables assess institutions on their contribution to articles in scientific journals in which researchers would most want to publish their best work.