Two reports from the National Science Foundation

Changing U.S. Output of Scientific Articles: 1988–2003 by Derek Hill, Alan I. Rapoport, Rolf F. Lehming, and Robert K. Bell, NSF 07-320, July 2007.

In an unexpected development in the early 1990s, the absolute number of science and engineering (S&E) articles published by U.S.-based authors in the world's major peer-reviewed journals plateaued. This was a change from a rise in the number of publications over at least the two preceding decades. With some variation, this trend occurred across different categories of institutions, different institutional sectors, and different fields of research. It occurred despite continued increases in resource inputs, such as funds and personnel, that support research and development (R&D).

In other developed countries—a group of 15 members of the European Union (the EU-15) and Japan—the absolute number of articles continued to grow throughout most of the 1992–2003 period. During the mid- to late 1990s, the number of articles published by EU scientists surpassed those published by their U.S. counterparts, and the difference between Japanese and U.S. article output narrowed. Late in the period, growth in the number of articles produced in some of these developed countries showed signs of slowing.

The trend in number of S&E articles produced in four developing East Asian economies (the East Asia-4) was markedly different. This group exhibited strong growth in the number of articles, number of influential articles, and percentage of overall output classified as influential. Nonetheless, because the East Asia-4 began the period with a much less mature S&E research establishment than the three S&E publishing centers named above, it continued to lag behind them on the measures examined.

The Changing Research and Publication Environment in American Research Universities by Robert K. Bell, with Derek Hill and Rolf F. Lehming, SRS 07-204, July 2007.

Those interviewed consistently reported that the research done in other developed countries and in several emerging Asian economies is getting better and becoming more abundant. In their view, improved capacity overseas is more likely to account for the increased share of S&E papers from foreign institutions than changes in what Americans have been doing. In an expanding literature, they see a continuing, even growing, American presence, but more marked growth occurring in other countries.

Advances in communication have made the international scientific literature more accessible to researchers in other countries. In this regard, advances in electronic communication loom large. As potential contributors to the literature, researchers can take advantage of improved electronic communication to collaborate more easily with distant colleagues and submit papers online. As readers, they can receive papers from colleagues via e-mail, find information in electronic archives and databases, and access scientific communications that cannot be found in a local university library. In addition to electronic communication, increased capacity worldwide to communicate in a common scientific language, English, has also played a role.

As the largest and most influential producer of scientific articles in the world and a nation whose native language is also the dominant language of science, the United States was already at the center of the worldwide system of scientific communication before these advances occurred. Thus, journals were already highly accessible to U.S. researchers, both as contributors and as readers, at the outset of the period studied. Improvements in communication may have had a greater effect on the ability of researchers elsewhere in the world—especially those in nations or at institutions that were not prominent in research in the late 1980s—to keep up with their fields, produce research of a reasonable quality, and report their research in journals with a wider audience and a greater impact.

Comment: The news here is not that other countries are producing more publications or that they are bearing more of the burden of advancing scientific knowledge. That is old, albeit very good news.

These studies are trying to understand why the output of scientific publications from the United States is not increasing, in spite of the fact that there is more funding for science. I think it is too early to know the real causes, but flatlining is always a concern. JAD