The tables for the 2026 Nature Spotlight: Infectious diseases are based on the Nature Index database and cover infectious-disease articles published in natural-science and health-science journals between 2021 and 2025.

A keyword search on abstracts and titles was conducted to extract infectious-disease articles in Digital Science’s Dimensions database (Digital Science is part of Holtzbrinck, the majority shareholder of Nature’s publisher, Springer Nature). The search covered 83 infectious diseases and included 5 subcategories to cover severe coronaviruses and influenza subtypes. The diseases and their Dimensions search strings were the same as those for Nature Index 2021 Infectious disease. The Dimensions articles identified that were also in the Nature Index database formed the data set for the tables in this Spotlight.