According to a study released by Japan’s science and technology ministry, China has surpassed the US as the global leader in both scientific research output and “high impact” studies. China currently publishes the most scientific research papers each year, followed by the US and Germany, according to a report released on Tuesday by Japan’s National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (NISTP), as reported by Guardian.
The estimates were derived from data gathered by the analytics company Clarivate and were based on yearly averages between 2018 and 2020.
The NISTP analysis also discovered that 27.2% of the top 1% most frequently referenced papers worldwide were from Chinese research. Academia frequently uses the amount of citations a research publication receives. The “citation impact” of a study increases with the number of times it is referenced in future articles by other researchers.
While the UK’s research placed third with 5.5%, the US accounted for 24.9% of the top 1% most widely cited research studies.
The analysis indicated that China produced an average of 407,181 scientific publications annually, surpassing the US’s 293,434 journal articles and making up 23.4% of global research production.
According to the Guardian, China accounted for a significant amount of research in the fields of materials science, chemistry, engineering, and mathematics, while US researchers were more active in the fields of clinical medicine, fundamental life sciences, and physics.
The report was released on the same day that US President Joe Biden authorised $200 billion in research investment over a ten-year period to increase the US’s scientific research’s competitiveness with China.
The survey also revealed that the US continues to spend more than any other nation on research and development in both the corporate and academic sectors.
According to Shinichi Kuroki of the Japan Science and Technology Agency, China is among the top nations in the world for both the amount and quality of scientific papers.
It must keep producing internationally acclaimed research, he added, “in order to become the true world leader.”
