In a latest report that ranks the world's universities according to scientific paper performance, National Taiwan University remains the leader in the Greater China area, despite dropping 12 positions from last year, while rankings for top schools in China are generally on the rise, with Tsinghua, Peking and Zhejiang as the frontrunners.

The Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan first began publishing its Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities in 2007 to evaluate the results of the five-year, 50 billion NT "top university plan."

While National Taiwan University slipped 12 places to 114th this year, it continued to enjoy the highest ranking among all Greater China universities.

The majority of Taiwanese universities saw their rankings fall this year, while the opposite held true for Chinese universities.

If the number of universities and professors had been taken into account, NTU would have ranked 87th and National Cheng Kung University would have ranked 189th, rather than 302nd.

According to the council, the relatively small size of Taiwan's universities means that the quantity of papers produced is pretty much set, and schools should therefore focus on improving the quality of papers produced.