Wednesday, January 02, 2008

U.S. Position in International Science

China USA UK Germany France Japan EU-25
1993 1.69 34.73 8.89 7.45 5.98 8.49 35.04
1994 1.70 33.66 8.97 7.54 5.99 8.57 35.90
1995 2.05 33.54 8.88 7.62 6.09 8.65 36.21
1996 2.31 32.29 9.02 7.93 6.18 8.94 37.08
1997 2.66 31.94 8.73 8.32 6.31 8.98 37.60
1998 2.90 31.63 9.08 8.82 6.48 9.42 38.82
1999 3.44 31.24 9.08 8.67 6.44 9.52 38.68
2000 3.89 30.93 9.22 8.69 6.31 9.49 38.67
2001 4.30 31.01 8.90 8.68 6.33 9.52 38.77
2002 4.98 30.75 8.60 8.50 6.10 9.43 38.16
2003 5.51 30.68 8.46 8.35 6.10 9.40 38.02
2004 6.52 30.48 8.33 8.14 5.84 8.84 37.59
2005 7.42 29.65 7.88 7.88 5.67 8.21 37.04
2006 8.42 29.50 7.84 7.72 5.56 7.82 37.05
Table: Percentages of world share of publications using
the 'Science Citation Index-Expanded version' at the ISI
Web-of-Knowledge.


This table is from "S&T publication rates: The bigger picture" by Loet Leydesdorff, published in SciDev.Net, 20 December 2007. Leydesdorff cites a more extensive paper he has written with Caroline Wagner: "Is the United States losing ground in science? A global perspective on the world science system."
In terms of citations, the competitive advantage of the American “domestic market” is diminished, while the European Union (EU) is profiting more from the enlargement of the database over time than the US. However, the USA is still outperforming all other countries in terms of highly cited papers and citation/publication ratios, and it is more successful than the EU in coordinating its research efforts in strategic priority areas like nanotechnology.
Comment: Comparing a large nation such as the United States with a much smaller nation such as France or Germany in terms of total output of publications is OK, but can easily be misinterpreted. Per capita publication rates are more likely to show the relative intensity of science.

The table shows not only that China is rapidly gaining scientific stature, at least in terms of indexed scientific papers, but also that the European Union has surpassed the United States in scientific publications for more than a decade. The United States now accounts for less than one-third of the world's scientific publications, down from more than half 50 years ago. That is good, in that other countries are bearing a more equitable part of the responsibility for creating new scientific knowledge.

I suspect that the impact indicators also reflect the common phenomenon of people being more influenced by the papers by compatriots than by those of foreigners. The large scientific community within the United States would then lead to American authors being more read and more attended to than authors from smaller national scientific communities.
JAD

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