China Closing Research Gap With The US
6 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // November 25th, 2008 // 7:13 am
When we think of China these days, we often think of tainted pharmaceutical ingredients or factories that are run at a lower cost than elsewhere. But some new data suggests China is much more - an emerging research powerhouse.
The US has traditionally published the greatest amount of peer-reviewed scientific research, but emerging nations, particularly, China, are showing signs of catching up, according to data from Elsevier, which publishes numerous medical journals.
Last year, the US maintained its worldwide lead with 344,000 articles published, compared with 181,000 in China. But the growth rate of some of the emerging countries surpasses the US rate. As the chart indicates, China’s research output over the last decade has increased 505 percent, while the US growth rate during the same period rose 10 percent (please click on the chart to enlarge).
Steven
They key seems to be wrong on the graph, but anyway - very interesting.
Would be interesting to look at some other factors - such as impact factor per paper over a similar time period to see if the quality of their research is also improving, or just the volume. I guess we’ll have to wait on Thomson/Reuters for that data…
Ed Silverman
Hi Steven,
I’ve asked Elsevier to make someone available to chat more about this or maybe provide additional data. If that happens, I will update or maybe even do another post if there’s something more to be said.
Regards
ed
Nathan
Ed,
Just to be clear, is the graph only showing date from Elsevier journals? Note while Elsevier has a large NUMBER of journals, they do not publish many of the the most prestegious and respected journals. (of top 7 or so medical journals, only Lancet is an Elsevier journal) This is true in related scientific disciplines as well.
Ed Silverman
Hi Nathan,
This is from the Scopus database, which you can look at here…
http://www.info.scopus.com/detail/what/
If you need further clarification, please let me know and I’ll do my best.
Regards
ed
Michael
My quick search on Sciencedirect (Elsevier’s journal portal) shows that in 2008 so far there have been 26,000 paper published in medicine by US-based authors and 4600 by authors whose affiliation is China. For 1997 the figures were 35,000 and 1000 respectively.
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published in medicine by US-based authors and 4600 by authors whose affiliation is China. For 1997 the figures were 35,000 and 1000 respectively.