Brussels, 15 Jul 2004
After the US, the UK is
the second most productive country in the world when it comes to
publishing scientific papers, according to a global analysis conducted
by Sir David King, the UK government's chief scientific adviser. The
combined effort of EU15 countries in this area outranks the US
performance, he also found.
The analysis, based on data from
US company Thomson ISI, showed that between 1997 and 2001, the US
produced almost 35 per cent of all scientific papers, almost four times
the number produced by second placed UK, with 9.43 per cent. Next came
Japan with 9.23 per cent; followed by Germany (8.76 per cent); France
(6.39 per cent); Canada (4.58 per cent) and Italy (4.05 per cent).
The survey also demonstrated that the combined effort of the 15
countries of the pre-enlargement EU represented 37.12 per cent of all
scientific publications, putting it ahead of its American competitors.
Thomson ISI catalogues the world's research journals and assesses the
impact of each paper according to the number of times it is cited by
other academics.
Drawing on a study of 8000 journals from 31
countries for his research, Sir David noted that those 31 nations
produced almost the entire top one per cent of most cited publications.
Other countries to feature in this top tier include Switzerland, Israel,
South Africa - the only African representative - and Iran, the sole
Islamic nation.
Sir David's analysis also showed that the UK
produced 12.8 per cent of the world's most cited papers, followed by
Germany with 10.4 per cent and Japan with 6.9 per cent. The US produced
63 per cent of all high impact papers. However, analysis shows that that
the US has lost almost three percentage points since the period
1993-97.
The top eight countries in the citation
classification accounted for 84.5 per cent of the top one per cent of
the world's most often cited scientific articles in the period from 1993
to 2001.
'There is a stark disparity between the first and
second divisions in the scientific impact of nations,' wrote Sir David
in the journal Nature, where the survey was published. 'Moreover,
although my analysis includes only 31 of the world's 193 countries,
these produce 97.5% of the world's most cited papers.'
The
political implications of this state of affairs are 'difficult to
exaggerate' he added. 'My key point in response to these statistics is
that sustainable economic development in highly competitive world
markets requires a direct engagement in the generation of knowledge.'
Sir David's study also showed that different countries have different strengths and weaknesses in the scientific field.
For example, the survey showed that France stood out in mathematics
while the UK was strong in medicine and life and environmental sciences,
but weak in physical sciences. China and India were shown to have
developed their scientific base swiftly and successfully over a short
period of time.
When output figures were related to the
amount spent on research, the survey showed that the UK had the
leadership in scientific productivity, ahead of the US, due to the
significant cutbacks in private spending on research between 1980 and
1995, explained Sir David.
'Although many UK scientists
campaigned against these cuts, they encouraged a level of
resourcefulness among researchers, and approaches to industry and the EU
that are now bearing fruit. Now that the present UK government is
increasing funding and rebuilding infrastructure, the pruned plant of UK
science is re-growing vigorously,' Sir David concluded.
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