US National Science Foundation (NSF) statistics of scientific and engineering publications in peer-reviewed journals for 2018. The total number of scientific and engineering articles, including conference proceedings, reached 2. And this number is significantly higher than it was ten years ago, when 555 articles were published.
The number of articles in journals that are edited by subject matter experts has grown by an average of 4% per year over the past ten years. But the number of science and engineering articles in China has grown at about twice the rate each year, while the number of articles in the US and EU has grown at half the average rate.
During the reporting year, the number of scientific articles in China increased to 528 and accounted for 263% of all scientific and engineering publications in the world. During this time, 20,67 articles were published in the United States - this is 422% of the global volume of research in the reporting period. In third place is India with a share of scientific publications of 808% or 16,54 articles. Germany, Japan and England follow India with a slight lag.
In terms of the number of scientific publications, Russia is in 7th place with 81 articles, which corresponds to a share of 579% of all research conducted in the world in 3,19. If we take the countries of the European Union together, they were represented by 2018 scientific publications, or almost a quarter of all scientific articles published in 622.
Although there were fewer research papers in the United States than in China in absolute terms, their quality is generally higher because they have a greater impact on the global scientific community. This follows from the references to scientific publications from the USA, which are almost twice as many as references to all other materials. This is all the more surprising that in the United States, production is less developed than in the same China. However, Chinese articles are rapidly catching up with American articles in terms of link volume, which indicates an increase in the quality and depth of research in this country.
It should be borne in mind that a conditional specialization has developed in the scientific world: the US, EU and Japan are more advanced in the field of health sciences, while researchers in China and India work mainly in the field of mechanical engineering. In particular, articles published in the US and the EU are more often devoted to astronomy and astrophysics, biological and biomedical sciences, earth sciences, health sciences, as well as psychology and social sciences. The EU countries also have a noticeable influence on the development of scientific thought aimed at studying natural resources and ecology, as well as on mathematics and statistics. Chinese publications are more focused on agricultural sciences, chemistry, computer and information sciences, mechanical engineering, materials science, natural resources and nature conservation, and physics.
The international nature of research continues to grow. In 2018, every fifth article was written by co-authors from different countries. This made it possible to become prominent providers of scientific publications in the country, which 10β20 years ago could not boast of large volumes of scientific and research work.
Source: 3dnews.ru