Researchers at institutes and universities in many Western countries worry about budget pressures, while scientists in several Asian countries are reportedly translating huge R&D investments into impressive gains in research output.
According to the Thomson Reuters National Science Indicators, the Asia-Pacific region improved its global share of published science articles from 13 percent in the early 1980s to just over 30 percent in 2009. The Indicators is an annual database that records the number of articles published in about 12,000 internationally recognised journals.
The proportion of articles from the US declined to 28 percent in 2009. This is down from 40 percent in the early 1980s. China has increased its share of articles to 11 percent in 2009 from just 0.4 percent in the early 1980s, followed by Japan, accounting for 6.7 percent. India is next, accounting for 3.4 percent. It was also observed that Singapore, with a population of just under five million, has increased its number of indexed articles from 200 in 1981 to 8,500 in 2009. Singapore devotes 3 percent of its GDP to R&D. With the government's Economic Strategy Committee setting the target of reaching 3.5 percent of GDP by 2015, the country plans to further boost its research standing.
According to academics, the increasing influence of world rankings has encouraged competition among Asian universities. Some of the most widely recognised rankings use the number of published journal articles and highly cited researchers as indicators. This includes the recently released rankings by the Center for World-Class Universities at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
While US universities continue to dominate the Jiao Tong rankings, the number of Chinese universities in the top 500 increased to 34 this year from 16 in 2004.
Despite the rise in the number of articles from the Asia-Pacific region, as a whole it still trails the US in terms of the number of times its research papers are cited by others. While some Asia-Pacific nations like Singapore have already surpassed the world average in terms of the number of citations per paper, the region as a whole continues to remain 20 percent below the world average. Researchers suggest that ensuring academics have the freedom to conduct independent research is crucial for the region to continue to improve its standing.
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