Excellence rates measure the quality of the scientific publications of the selected countries based on the share of national publications that are among the world's most cited 10 percent of publications in the respective field.

Germany's excellence rate has been declining since 2010 and in 2018, at 9.8 percent, was below the expected value of 10 percent for the first time in the observation period. China's excellence rate, on the other hand, increased from 2.7 percent in 1995 to 10.9 percent in 2018. Switzerland (13.6 percent), the UK (12.6 percent) and the USA (12.4 percent) recorded the highest excellence rates among the countries under comparison in 2018. In contrast to China, the USA has shown declining excellence rates since 2002, when a peak of 15 percent was reached.