Climbing Mount Publishable

TWENTY years ago North America, Europe and Japan produced almost all of the world's science. They were the aristocrats of technical knowledge, presiding over a centuries-old regime. They spent the most, published the most and patented the most. And what they produced fed back into their industrial, military and medical complexes to push forward innovation, productivity, power, health and prosperity.

All good things, though, come to an end, and the reign of these scientific aristos is starting to look shaky. In 1990 they carried out more than 95% of the world's research and development (R&D). By 2007 that figure was 76%.

Such, at least, is the conclusion of the latest report* from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, UNESCO. The picture the report paints is of a waning West and a rising East and South, mirroring the economic shifts going on in the wider world. The sans culottes of science are on the march.

GERD is good

Comparisons of the scientific prowess of countries frequently begin with spending. One measure of this is GERD, gross domestic expenditure on R&D. Globally, GERD amounted to $1.15 trillion in 2007 (the last year the UNESCO report measures). That was up 45% compared with 2002. Moreover, in those five years Asia's share of the total rose from 27% to 32%.

When comparing economies of different sizes, the share of national wealth spent on R&D is also useful—particularly as scientific excellence tends to concentrate itself in small areas of the world, allowing researchers in tiny countries like Singapore to challenge those of larger ones, such as America. In 2007 Japan spent 3.4% of its GDP on R&D, America 2.7%, the European Union (EU) collectively 1.8% and China 1.4% (see chart 1). Many countries seeking to improve their global scientific standing want to increase these figures. China plans to push on to 2.5% and Barack Obama would like to nudge America up to 3%.

The number of researchers has also grown everywhere. China is on the verge of overtaking both America and the EU in the quantity of its scientists. Each had roughly 1.5m researchers out of a global total of 7.2m in 2007. Nevertheless, the number of scientists per million people remains relatively low in China. And India, second only to China in the size of its population, has only a tenth as many researchers. This is a surprising anomaly for a country that has become the world's leading exporter of information-technology services and ranks third after America and Japan in terms of the volume of pharmaceuticals it produces.

Having lots of boffins does not matter, though, if they are not productive. One indicator of prowess is how much a country's researchers publish. As an individual country, America still leads the world by some distance. Yet America's share of world publications, at 28% in 2007, is slipping. In 2002 it was 31%. The EU's collective share also fell, from 40% to 37%, whereas China's has more than doubled to 10% and Brazil's grew by 60%, from 1.7% of the world's output to 2.7% (see chart 2).

The size of Asia's population leads UNESCO to conclude that it will become the “dominant scientific continent in the coming years”. But citation of English-language articles in Chinese journals by other publications remains low. This could be because Chinese science is poor or because researchers in America, Europe and Japan have an historical bias towards citing each other. The average American paper was cited 14.3 times between 1998 and 2008, whereas the average Chinese paper was cited only 4.6 times, about the same as papers published in India and less than those published in South Korea.

For science's aristos, then, much of this suggests the tumbrels await. But the story does not end there. What also counts is the extent to which countries are successful in using the knowledge they generate.

One way of looking at that is to count how many patents a country produces. This can be tricky. A recent report from Thomson Reuters, an information firm that is also the source of much of UNESCO's data on scientific publications, suggests that between 2003 and 2009 Chinese patent filings grew by 26%—far faster than anywhere else. By this measure China will become the world's largest registrar of patents in 2011. There is a snag, though. Bureaucrats in Chinese patent offices are paid more if they approve more. As a result there is a mountain of Chinese patents of dubious quality.

UNESCO's latest attempt to look at patents has therefore focused on the offices of America, Europe and Japan, as these are deemed of “high quality”. In these patent offices, America dominated, with 41.8% of the world's patents in 2006, a share that had fallen only slightly over the previous our years. Japan had 27.9%, the EU 26.4%, South Korea 2.2% and China 0.5%.

The prospects for R&D investment by business look bright in many of the emerging scientific nations, however. Between 2002 and 2007 business investment as a proportion of GDP has risen rapidly in China, India, Singapore and South Korea (although India's increase was from a low base). But at least one aristo is fighting back, for investment has risen rapidly in Japan.

Although much of this might seem cause for the old regime to fret, there is one other pattern worth noting: that of growing international collaboration. Thanks to cheap travel and the rise of the internet, scientists find it easier than ever to work together. According to Sir Chris Llewellyn-Smith, the chairman of the advisory group for another report on global science (to be published early next year by the Royal Society, the world's oldest scientific academy), more than 35% of articles in leading journals are now the product of international collaboration. That is up from 25% 15 years ago—something the old regime and the new alike can celebrate.

* “UNESCO Science Report 2010. The Current Status of Science Around the World”. UNESCO Publishing. €29