China has become a notable factor in the scientific landscape. The country is reportedly finding its place as one of the world's scientific power houses considering the substantial increase in journal papers written by Chinese scientists. According to a research article published in the journal Physics World, China has already overtaken the UK and Germany in the number of physics papers published and is beginning to nip at the heels of the US. Nanoscience, quantum computing and high-temperature superconductivity are three areas of physics that have particularly seen large increases.
It is estimated that if China's output continues to increase at its current pace, the country will be publishing more articles in physics, and all of science, than the US by 2012. However, China is currently a long way from the national citation top spot, ranked in 65th for physics just ahead of Kuwait, with an average of 4.12 citations for each of the papers published. According to Werner Marx, an information scientist from the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Germany, who carried out the bibliometric study for the Physics World article, the figure is still quite impressive, and will rise substantially in the next few years.
All indications suggest that China's propensity for world-leading research is growing. In March this year scientists in Japan first reported a new class of iron-based superconducting material that can conduct electricity without resistance when cooled to below 26 Kelvin (K). Within a month of the initial Japanese discovery, researchers in China boosted the transition temperature at which the material loses all its electrical resistance to 52 K.
