Scientific Outputs   < enlarge >

Scientific Output

Astrong measure of a country's scientific output is the number of scientific papers published by authors in that country. Recent data from numerous sources have shown rapid growth in scientific paper output from countries such as China, and the figures put this growth into context. China's output of papers in the biological sciences has been rapidly growing over the past decade (bottom), but a global view of papers from the U.S., European Union (EU-15) and Asia shows a more subtle trend (below). When one looks at paper output in Asia alone (middle right), it appears that China's increased output is primarily at the expense of Japan, but it is necessary to look deeper. A strong measure of the quality of a scientific paper is its citation rate, which measures how frequently a paper is cited by other papers (upper right). A significant paper should receive many citations, whereas papers with fewer citations are generally of less appeal. While China excels in the number of papers being produced, its citation rates are lower than many peers; Asian neighbors such as South Korea and India are also increasing their paper output, and their higher citation rates suggest greater scientific impact.

SOURCES: National Science Foundation, Division of Science Resources Statistics. 2007. Asia's Rising Science and Technology Strength: Comparative Indicators for Asia, the European Union, and the United States. NSF 07-319. Arlington, VA. and NSF Science and Engineering Indicators 2010.