According to a Japanese science policy institute, China has slightly surpassed the US in the number of most cited papers. Fresh evidence shows that China's scholarship is catching up in quality. People are writing off China because they think it's not good quality. It's short-sighted.
The United States is still ahead even though scholars disagree about the best way to measure impact.
The National Institute of Science and Technology Policy of Japan counted the top 1% papers in terms of citations. The analysis is complicated by the fact that many of the articles have authors from multiple countries. The method offractional counting was used in one study. France and Sweden would each get 25% of the credit if one of their institutions contributed to a paper.
The United States accounted for 24.9% of the most cited papers published in the last three years. Japan was in 10th place with 5.6%. When NISTEP used a less fine-grained method, the U.S. researchers were slightly ahead.
The methodology may overstate China's contributions to internationally co-authored papers. The question is who led the studies?
The question is who—the Chinese or their international collaborators—led the [high-impact] studies.
NISTEP says that China's rising production of top-cited papers is "remarkable." 2 decades ago it only ranked 13th.
The United States was overtaken by China in the number of published papers. Critics faulted the quality of Chinese research because of policies that rewarded authors based on the number of papers published. The number of China-based paper mills that give researchers with authorship slots in exchange for money appears to be growing. The study shows that China is getting better at doing top-notch science.
The United States is still ahead of the others. The State of U.S. Science and Engineering is a report published by the National Science Foundation. The share of papers that are highly cited allows for comparisons across countries regardless of how much is published. More than twice as many U.S. papers ended up in the top 1% of most cited papers as expected based on the country's total output. More top-cited papers were published by China. The United States and China are both ranked ahead of Canada and the United Kingdom on this measure.
The United States and China were tied in a new study that used a different method. The report found that China published more papers in the top 1% most cited than the US. The margin between the two countries was not significant when it came to the number of papers.
China's research is slightly more innovative than the world average according to a paper published in 2020. A study tracked the number of papers that included atypical combinations of journals in different fields.
The impact of publications is just one of many measures of a country's scientific prowess. The number of doctorates awarded is one of the indicators that the United States leads in. There is no doubt that China is catching up with the rest of the world in terms of scientific innovation.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
