An article from Thomson Reuters has some interesting facts about China’s R&D:
The study draws on data found in Web of Science®, available on the Web of Knowledge platform — the world’s largest citation environment of the highest quality scholarly literature. Key findings include:
• China’s output increased from just over 20,000 research papers in 1998 to nearly 112,000 in 2008, The nation doubled its output since 2004 alone. China surpassed Japan, the UK and Germany in 2006 and now stands second only to the USA.
• China is heading to overtake the USA in output within the next decade.
• China’s research is concentrated in the physical sciences and technology. Materials science, chemistry and physics predominate. Looking toward the future, rapid growth can be seen in agricultural sciences and life sciences fields such as immunology, microbiology, and molecular biology and genetics.
• The USA stands out in terms of collaboration with China., US-based authors contributed to nearly 9 percent of papers from China-based institutions between 2004 and 2008.
• Regional collaboration expansion is notable, especially with Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Australia.
Not surprising – given China’s size and scientific focus, but, hopefully a kick in the pants for the US and Europe to start emphasizing Research and Development not only in higher education, but also in high school, in large corporations and in government.
