Abstract:In order to aim at promoting Chinese universities to be world-class universities, this paper takes 41 first-class universities in China as research objects, and applies data envelopment analysis (DEA) and Malmquist index (DEA) to measure the efficiency of scientific research in 2013 -2017 from both static and dynamic perspectives. The results show that, in static state, the overall scientific research level of these universities is high, and the efficiency of regional scientific research presents the difference of east > west > central > northeast, and the efficiency of comprehensive scientific research is the highest in the attribute classification of different universities, followed by the science and technology; dynamically, the total factor productivity of scientific research in these universities during the research period is affected by the index of technological progress, showing a slight upward trend as a whole, the regional gap in the efficiency of scientific research between the eastern and central and western regions is widening, while the regional disparity is narrowing between the east and the northeast, and the scientific research efficiency in agricultural and forestry universities is steady improvement. In short, the internal scientific research gap of China's first-class universities continues to exist, but the overall differences will continue to narrow.