A global perspective on the world science system (updated for 2006)

[David E. Wojick]

I am bothered by the concept of "losing ground" here. China has transitioned from being a poor country to being a mid-level one in terms of wealth. It is a global manufacturing center. This is wonderful news. In the process it now has, as I understand, about 800,000 research workers. This is second only to the US with 1.2 million.

Suppose the publication rates are proportional to the research populations, and China's is growing rapidly along with its economy. How then is the US losing ground? China's gain is not my loss. This is important because this fallacy, if it is one, pervades Congressional thinking today.

David

At 03:32 PM 1/28/2007, you wrote:
>Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe): http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html 
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><http://www.leydesdorff.net/us_science/index.htm>Is the United States losing ground in science? 
>A global perspective on the world science system (updated for 2006<http://www.leydesdorff.net/us_science/index.htm>)<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
>
> 
>Based on the Science Citation Index–Expanded web-version, the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />USA is still by far the strongest nation in terms of scientific performance. Its relative decline in percentage share of publications is largely due to the emergence of China and other Asian nations. In 2006, China has become the second largest nation in terms of the number of publications within this database. In terms of citations, the competitive advantage of the American “domestic market” is diminished, while the European Union (EU) is profiting more from the enlargement of the database over time than the US. However, the USA is still outperforming all other countries in terms of highly cited papers and citation/publication ratios, and it is more successful than the EU in coordinating its research efforts in strategic priority areas like nanotechnology. In this field, 
>China has become second largest in both numbers of papers published and citations behind the USA. 
><http://www.leydesdorff.net/us_science/us_science.pdf>
>[]
><http://www.leydesdorff.net/us_science/us_science.pdf><click here for pdf>
>
>----------
>Loet Leydesdorff 
>Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR)
>Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam
>Tel.: +31-20- 525 6598; fax: +31-20- 525 3681 
><mailto:loet at leydesdorff.net>loet at leydesdorff.net ; http://www.leydesdorff.net/ 
> 
>Now available: <http://www.universal-publishers.com/book.php?method=ISBN&book=1581129378>The Knowledge-Based Economy: Modeled, Measured, Simulated. 385 pp.; US$ 18.95 
><http://www.universal-publishers.com/book.php?method=ISBN&book=1581126956>The Self-Organization of the Knowledge-Based Society; <http://www.universal-publishers.com/book.php?method=ISBN&book=1581126816>The Challenge of Scientometrics
> 
> 
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