China and the Royal Society

Sat Apr 2 13:01:09 EDT 2011

Dear Andrew, 

Thank you for this clarification. I was confused by the sentence "Elsevier's
publication data" which I erroneously assumed to be different from Scopus
because the latter also contains, for example, "Wiley's publication data",
doesn't it?

Anyhow, the curve then raises even more questions. I understand that you do
not include letters, but this cannot make so much difference. I used the
four citable items of the ISI database for reasons of comparability and the
search string was: 

AFFILCOUNTRY(United States) AND (DOCTYPE(ar) OR DOCTYPE(re) OR DOCTYPE(le)
OR DOCTYPE(cp)) AND PUBYEAR is 2008

Mutatis mutandis. The data are then: 

China

United States

world

% China

% USA

2000

44,537

305,768

1,159,205

3.84203

26.37739

2001

57,755

299,688

1,207,085

4.784667

24.82741

2002

57,102

305,358

1,246,514

4.580935

24.49696

2003

69,617

324,466

1,324,869

5.254633

24.49042

2004

102,093

306,898

1,464,399

6.971666

20.95727

2005

152,365

327,734

1,600,948

9.517174

20.47125

2006

179,780

348,400

1,702,704

10.5585

20.46157

2007

203,060

362,015

1,787,264

11.3615

20.25526

2008

236,564

372,357

1,848,046

12.80076

20.14869

2009

280,911

398,232

1,911,139

14.69862

20.83742

2010

305,600

443,687

1,879,200

16.26224

23.61042

The figure in my email of a few hours ago was based on this data. There is
only weak correspondence with the data in your Figure 1.6 and the central
inference of the Royal Society report is therefore not warranted. 

I look forward to the further explanation. 

Best wishes, 

Loet

  _____  

Loet Leydesdorff 

Professor, University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR), 
Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam. 
Tel.: +31-20- 525 6598; fax: +31-842239111
 <mailto:loet at leydesdorff.net> loet at leydesdorff.net ;
<http://www.leydesdorff.net/> http://www.leydesdorff.net/ 

From: ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics
[mailto:SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU] On Behalf Of Plume, Andrew (ELS-OXF)
Sent: Saturday, April 02, 2011 6:27 PM
To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU
Subject: [SIGMETRICS] China and the Royal Society

Dear Loet,

While I am sure readers of SIGMETRICS welcome this methodological discussion
on extrapolating trends, as an analyst for Elsevier on the Royal Society
report I would like to correct a misunderstanding in your post about the
data used therein.  The publication and citation data used throughout
"Knowledge, Networks and Nations" are from Scopus and NOT just Elsevier
journals as your post suggests.  This is stated explicitly in footnote 155
(pg. 43) to Figure 1.6 you reproduced: "Analysis by Elsevier based on data
from Scopus. This indicates a simple linear projection of the data." 

This is also made clear in the methodology section of the report (pg. 12):
"Publication data are derived from Scopus, the world's largest abstract and
citation database of peer-reviewed literature. Scopus contains over 41
million records across 18,000 journals and covers regional as well as
international literature. Publication outputs in this report are defined as
articles, reviews and conference papers published in these journals. Where
we consider overall totals of publications, these include outputs in all
disciplines."

The report is also very clear on how this projection should be interpreted
(pp. 43-44): "In terms of publications, the landscape is set to change even
more dramatically if current trends continue, as can be seen in Figure 1.6.
China has already overtaken the UK as the second leading producer of
research publications, but some time before 2020 it is expected to surpass
the USA. Projections vary, but a simple linear interpretation of Elsevier's
publishing data suggests that this could take place as early as 2013. Of
course, in practice, this will not follow a linear progression (we do not
expect that the USA will decrease their share of global publications to
nothing in the next 50 years), but the potential for China to match US
output in terms of sheer numbers in the near to medium term is clear."

Different methodologies can obviously yield very different results: in your
own manuscript Figure 5 (pg. 27; which you reproduced below) gives a very
different picture from Figure 6 (pg. 32), which is noted as "more useful"
and that shows China surpassing the US in article share in 2015.

A comprehensive, global report of the type of "Knowledge, Networks and
Nations" is not trivial undertaking, and the data presented in it were
analysed in depth over a period of almost 18 months prior to its final
publication. For this reason, the final data point presented is current to
2008 only. It is not (yet) appropriate to use 2010 data for the calculation
of article shares (as you have done in your follow-up message), since the
data are not yet finished and may give false impressions.

In Research Trends (www.researchtrends.com; Editor-in-Chief: Henk Moed),
next week we will publish a fresh analysis using Scopus data up to and
including 2009 reaffirming the findings in "Knowledge, Networks and
Nations". The feature also draws on data from the 2010 NSF "Science and
Engineering Indicators" report to show that - based on latest available data
- the capacity-building (i.e. in manpower) that China has been focused on in
recent years is showing no let-up, suggesting that at least this underlying
driver of publication output will remain.

Best wishes,

Andrew

Dr Andrew Plume |Associate Director - Scientometrics & Market Analysis
|Research & Academic Relations Department|Elsevier |The Boulevard |Langford
Lane |Kidlington |Oxford |OX5 1GB |UK |phone +44 (0)1865 843835 |mobile:+44
(0)7795970766 |fax: +44 (0)1865 843982 | <mailto:a.plume at elsevier.com>
a.plume at elsevier.com

Elsevier Limited. Registered Office: The Boulevard, Langford Lane,
Kidlington, Oxford, OX5 1GB, United Kingdom, Registration No. 1982084
(England and Wales).

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