(Yicai Global) May 24 -- Beijing retained its spot as the biggest global center for scientific publications for the second consecutive year in 2017, according to a think tank based in Shanghai.

Beijing overtook New York's position in terms of the number of influential science publications in 2016 after the latter ranked first for four years, online news outlet The Paper reported today, citing two research reports from the Shanghai Institute for Science of Science. The ranking is based on data from Springer Nature's Nature Index.

Shanghai rose from the ninth position to the sixth place in 2017.

The global top 20 cities for science research, including Boston and San Francisco, increased their "market share" by 12 percent from 2012 to 2017 by participating in 64 percent of all global influential research papers. Researchers in these hubs led 27 percent of the studies despite their cities housing less than 3 percent of the global population. 

Editor: Emmi Laine