Dear Nature Index Team,
I hope this message finds you well.
I am writing to kindly request clarification regarding the inclusion of a recent article in the Nature Index database and its attribution to ITMO University.
The article in question is:
"Global, regional and national burden of dietary iron deficiency from 1990 to 2021: a Global Burden of Disease study"
Published in Nature Medicine on 22 April 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-025-03624-8
One of the co-authors, Amin Mousavi Khaneghah, is affiliated with the Faculty of Biotechnologies (BioTech), ITMO University, Saint Petersburg, Russia. This article was published in Nature Medicine, which is part of the journals tracked by the Nature Index.
However, we note that this publication does not appear in the institutional output for ITMO National Research University for the current time frame (1 July 2024 – 30 June 2025), despite meeting the following criteria:
The journal (Nature Medicine) is included in the Nature Index.
The publication date falls within the current reporting period.
An author is clearly affiliated with ITMO University.
Given that the Nature Index uses fractional count (Share) methodology — where credit is distributed based on author affiliations, even when shared across multiple institutions — we would expect at least a minimal Share attributed to ITMO University, especially since all authors are considered to have contributed equally in the calculation.
Could you please clarify the following points?
1.Why might this article not appear in ITMO University’s output list? Is there a technical delay, or could it have been excluded due to the large number of co-authors or consortium-style authorship?
2.How are authors listed within large collaborations treated in the Nature Index? Specifically, when an individual author is named explicitly (not just as part of a group or consortium), but belongs to a multi-institutional collaboration, is their affiliation still credited with a fractional Share?
3.Is there a minimum threshold for Share below which an institution's contribution is not displayed or recorded in the public-facing tables? For example, in cases with hundreds of authors, individual institutional Shares can be extremely small (e.g., <0.001). Are such contributions aggregated differently or omitted from visibility?
We understand that the Nature Index captures primary research articles and applies standardized rules for attribution, and we greatly appreciate the transparency provided in your FAQs. However, given the scale of collaborative science today, we want to ensure accurate representation of institutional contributions, particularly for smaller shares arising from high-impact, multi-author studies.
Thank you very much for your time and assistance. We would be grateful for any insight you could provide into the processing of this specific article and the general policy regarding low-Share affiliations in large collaborations.
Best regards,
Anna Gelfand
Senior analyst, Rankings research center
Institute of International Development and Partnership
+7 (812) 480-44-81 | aogelfand@itmo.ru
ITMO University