Scientific research around the world

Britain's Royal Society, the world’s oldest scientific academy have been published a report with the conclusion “Science is becoming bigger and more global.” Emerging scientific nations are gaining influence, as measured by how often their researchers get cited in peer-reviewed journals.

The picture was coming from the daily chart on the Economist web. It shows the percentage of the global citation in scientific journals. Compare with 1999 ~ 2003, the percentage of the global citation in scientific journals of the United State has decreased 6.4%, however, it still published the most number of the scientific journals in the world. The second largest percentage country is Britain, which is 8.1%. However, the number is far lower that the United State’s. The top two countries still account 38% of global citations in 2004~2008, down from 45% in the previous five years. China and Spain, with 4% and 3% of global citations in 2004-2008 respectively, and also pushed Australia and Switzerland out of the top ten for the previous five years.

“Boffins the world over are also citing more eagerly, on average, than they used to. Citations grew by 55% between 1999-2003 and 2004-2008. Meanwhile, the number of published papers grew by just 33%.” The news said. The growth in citations could be partly down to an increase in the proportion of published papers that are the product of international collaboration to 35% of the total, up from 25% 15 years ago.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/03/global_science_research