Summary:

According to a report published by the US National Science Foundation in January 2018, China has become the world's top producer of academic papers in the science and engineering field. The report found that China produced more than 426,000 studies in the field in 2016, based on dividing the credit for each publication fractionally among authors from each country.

This is the first time that China's science and engineering output exceeded that of the US, which published around 409,000 papers by the same methodology. The UK was in 5th place with around 97,500 science and engineering papers.

The report also found that China is now slightly outperforming the worldwide average in terms of the number of highly cited publications, with 1.01 per cent of Chinese publications appearing among the top 1% most highly cited papers in their respective fields. However, this is still well behind the proportion seen in the US, meaning that China is still only the second-largest country in terms of highly cited publications.

Analysis by Kevin Prest

China's research output has grown substantially in recent years, in terms of both quantity and quality. This is largely due to heavy government investment, especially in the country's top universities as a result of policies like the current World Class Universities project. The number of research papers published in top journals is a key target for many Chinese universities, and international collaboration is seen as one way to expand the production of high-quality research. There are therefore strong opportunities for UK institutions to build research links with Chinese partners.

Sources

1. Science and Engineering Indicators 2018 (National Science Foundation): https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2018/nsb20181//report

2. China declared world’s largest producer of scientific articles (Nature): https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-00927-4