Finally, I found what I've been looking for
. I've already posted Scopus Database's rankings of various countries' scientific output here a few times, but the version available to the public only really lets you see the quantity of the papers, and not to look deeper at their quality.
Thankfully, the EU made a pretty comprehensive report on the topic in 2024.
First off, starting with the overall quantity I've mentioned, but processed better than I ever could.
In 2022, the EU, China and the US accounted for almost 60% of the world's scientific output, with the EU providing 18.1% of it, the US 13.1%, and China 27%, being just 4.2 percentage points behind the former two put together. Brazil, Russia and South Africa together accounted for 5.1% of the world's output, as did Japan and South Korea put together, while the last classical BRICS member, India, accounted for 6.2%, which was almost twice as much as its former master, the UK, at 3.2%. The entire rest of the world apart from those countries accounted for 22.1%.
In terms of how those shares had evolved over time, we can see the expected convergence pattern of established powers declining and new ones catching up and rising. The EU modestly declined from what seems to have been about 25% of world total in 2000, the US' share more than halved from what seems to have been about 30% of world total then, China obviously grew crazily, BRS countries went from being utterly dwarfed by Japan and South Korea to being neck-and-neck with them, India and the UK pretty much switched the positions of having output about twice as big as the other, and the rest of the world's shared seems to have also risen modestly.
In terms of specifically EU members' dynamics and publications per capita:
In the EU, we can see a similar dynamic expressed in a Germanic/French decline and Eastern and Southern Europe catching up. Germany is still at the top, but Italy is now much closer to it than it was in 2002, when it wasn't the number two. In fact, 2002's number two, France, has cratered and is now behind both Italy and Spain at fourth place, which is a bit crazy considering that it has a higher population and GDP per capita than both of them. Poland has overtaken The Netherlands, Portugal has surged and si now very close to Sweden, Belgium has declined a bit, Denmark's share had increased but it's now still almost neck-and-neck with Czechia and Greece who are on level with Austria, Finland has declined a bit, and so on and so forth.
To varying levels, a clear majority of EU countries and the other mentioned countries have increased their scientific production per capita, the ones catching up obviously doing so much more. France is the only one whose per capita production has decreased since 2012, and they are now behind Slovakia, whichis something I've been waiting for years ever since finding out that the distance between our two countries is surprisingly small. The US has also very slightly declined there. Belgium, the UK and Japan have stagnated, Canada is right between stagnating and very, very weakly growing, while Sweden, The Netherlands and Germany have very weakly grown. China has grown, but is still dead last here, being slightly less scientifically productive when taking population into account than Romania, which is crazy to think about when considering their total output, and makes you wonder how their total output will look when, and if, they start converging more with the richer European countries.
So that's it for the total numbers, but how about the quality instead of the quantity? Everyone can churn out hordes of low-level papers, especially now in the age of LLMs and GenAI, but what if we want to see who's creating the quality stuff? Thankfully, there's a widely-used metric in scientific publishing for that, and that is to not look at the total number of papers, but to look at the amount and share of papers that cross a certain global citation threshold. Those most commonly are the papers who are in top 10% and top 1% globally in terms of how often they are cited, and this report looked at both of those, the former more so than the latter.
So, as for the top 10% of most cited papers in the world:
The US does better there, being just barely above Europe in terms of share in 2022, though its decline is even starker, as it had actually had about twice of the EU's share in 2000, and China's rise is even starker, even though its share is a tiny bit smaller there then in overall quantity. India's share seems to shrink so much that it was now added to the BRS group, which here becomes BRIS, with those four countries put together having a somewhat higher share than the UK alone, with a 5.7% share vs 5.3%, though they are clearly above Japan and South Korea together, which have a 3.9% share, the two groups of countries basically switching their positions from 2000 though the latter dominated the former more than they now do them, and the rest of the world falls a bit to 19.8%, which is still more than it had in 2000.
In terms of intra-EU dynamics, we still see the same pattern, though more brutal in some parts, and less so in others. Of the four dominant countries, France has still fallen to the bottom, but the difference between Germany and Italy is now much narrower. The Netherlands does much better here and is still the 5th by this metric, though Poland has surged and is close to overtaking Sweden at the 6th place, Portugal has also surged and is now gaining on Denmark after overtaking Austria, Finland has noticeably declined and is close to Greece, and after than, we mostly see countries with very small shares gaining, with the sole exception of Bulgaria, whose share there has actually declined from 2010 to 2020.
In terms of chances of papers from various countries to be in the top 10%, it's mostly the same story. A lot of declines from the ones already big, lots of catching up from those smaller, but of course, it's not just that simple. Albania has grown like crazy from a complete nonentity by this measure, but Moldova has somehow managed to decline despite having no place to go but up, Ukraine and Serbia have stagnated despite being poor, Bulgaria has declined even there, Portugal has declined there despite surging in the EU-only graph, Finland, Czechia and Greece have stagnated, as have Australia, the UK and South Korea, and so on, with the EU as a whole lightly declining.
And finally, countries' shares of the top 1% of most-cited papers in the world:
The rest of the world falls a tiny bit. The UK, BRIS, and Japan + South Korea are in a clear descending hierarchy there as of 2022, China has absolutely exploded there since 2000 and has a slightly higher global share there than in the graph showing total amount of papers published. The US has still declined much more sharply than the EU, having had nearly 50% global share in 2000, but after being below it in the first graph of total amount of publications and the two being very close in the top 10% one, here it's clearly above the EU, showing that American research tends to be higher quality than European one, at least in terms of citations.
In terms of individual countries' publications' chances of being in the global 1%, we see the trend from before get even rockier. Albania has still stelarly grown, but compared to before, Moldova has completely collapsed. Ukraine has stagnated, while Montenegro and Serbia hasve declined. Japan has somewhat declined, but South Korea has actually grown. The US has significantly declined, as have, in the EU, the Netherlands and Denmark alongside a bunch of other countries facing less severe declines. The only major EU country that had grown there is Italy, with Spain stagnating while Germany and France of course declining. Ireland, Finland, Slovenia and Czechia have stagnated, while most of EE seems to have somewhat grown, even if Lithuania had declined.
. I've already posted Scopus Database's rankings of various countries' scientific output here a few times, but the version available to the public only really lets you see the quantity of the papers, and not to look deeper at their quality.Thankfully, the EU made a pretty comprehensive report on the topic in 2024.
First off, starting with the overall quantity I've mentioned, but processed better than I ever could.
In 2022, the EU, China and the US accounted for almost 60% of the world's scientific output, with the EU providing 18.1% of it, the US 13.1%, and China 27%, being just 4.2 percentage points behind the former two put together. Brazil, Russia and South Africa together accounted for 5.1% of the world's output, as did Japan and South Korea put together, while the last classical BRICS member, India, accounted for 6.2%, which was almost twice as much as its former master, the UK, at 3.2%. The entire rest of the world apart from those countries accounted for 22.1%.
In terms of how those shares had evolved over time, we can see the expected convergence pattern of established powers declining and new ones catching up and rising. The EU modestly declined from what seems to have been about 25% of world total in 2000, the US' share more than halved from what seems to have been about 30% of world total then, China obviously grew crazily, BRS countries went from being utterly dwarfed by Japan and South Korea to being neck-and-neck with them, India and the UK pretty much switched the positions of having output about twice as big as the other, and the rest of the world's shared seems to have also risen modestly.
In terms of specifically EU members' dynamics and publications per capita:
In the EU, we can see a similar dynamic expressed in a Germanic/French decline and Eastern and Southern Europe catching up. Germany is still at the top, but Italy is now much closer to it than it was in 2002, when it wasn't the number two. In fact, 2002's number two, France, has cratered and is now behind both Italy and Spain at fourth place, which is a bit crazy considering that it has a higher population and GDP per capita than both of them. Poland has overtaken The Netherlands, Portugal has surged and si now very close to Sweden, Belgium has declined a bit, Denmark's share had increased but it's now still almost neck-and-neck with Czechia and Greece who are on level with Austria, Finland has declined a bit, and so on and so forth.
To varying levels, a clear majority of EU countries and the other mentioned countries have increased their scientific production per capita, the ones catching up obviously doing so much more. France is the only one whose per capita production has decreased since 2012, and they are now behind Slovakia, whichis something I've been waiting for years ever since finding out that the distance between our two countries is surprisingly small. The US has also very slightly declined there. Belgium, the UK and Japan have stagnated, Canada is right between stagnating and very, very weakly growing, while Sweden, The Netherlands and Germany have very weakly grown. China has grown, but is still dead last here, being slightly less scientifically productive when taking population into account than Romania, which is crazy to think about when considering their total output, and makes you wonder how their total output will look when, and if, they start converging more with the richer European countries.
So that's it for the total numbers, but how about the quality instead of the quantity? Everyone can churn out hordes of low-level papers, especially now in the age of LLMs and GenAI, but what if we want to see who's creating the quality stuff? Thankfully, there's a widely-used metric in scientific publishing for that, and that is to not look at the total number of papers, but to look at the amount and share of papers that cross a certain global citation threshold. Those most commonly are the papers who are in top 10% and top 1% globally in terms of how often they are cited, and this report looked at both of those, the former more so than the latter.
So, as for the top 10% of most cited papers in the world:
The US does better there, being just barely above Europe in terms of share in 2022, though its decline is even starker, as it had actually had about twice of the EU's share in 2000, and China's rise is even starker, even though its share is a tiny bit smaller there then in overall quantity. India's share seems to shrink so much that it was now added to the BRS group, which here becomes BRIS, with those four countries put together having a somewhat higher share than the UK alone, with a 5.7% share vs 5.3%, though they are clearly above Japan and South Korea together, which have a 3.9% share, the two groups of countries basically switching their positions from 2000 though the latter dominated the former more than they now do them, and the rest of the world falls a bit to 19.8%, which is still more than it had in 2000.
In terms of intra-EU dynamics, we still see the same pattern, though more brutal in some parts, and less so in others. Of the four dominant countries, France has still fallen to the bottom, but the difference between Germany and Italy is now much narrower. The Netherlands does much better here and is still the 5th by this metric, though Poland has surged and is close to overtaking Sweden at the 6th place, Portugal has also surged and is now gaining on Denmark after overtaking Austria, Finland has noticeably declined and is close to Greece, and after than, we mostly see countries with very small shares gaining, with the sole exception of Bulgaria, whose share there has actually declined from 2010 to 2020.
In terms of chances of papers from various countries to be in the top 10%, it's mostly the same story. A lot of declines from the ones already big, lots of catching up from those smaller, but of course, it's not just that simple. Albania has grown like crazy from a complete nonentity by this measure, but Moldova has somehow managed to decline despite having no place to go but up, Ukraine and Serbia have stagnated despite being poor, Bulgaria has declined even there, Portugal has declined there despite surging in the EU-only graph, Finland, Czechia and Greece have stagnated, as have Australia, the UK and South Korea, and so on, with the EU as a whole lightly declining.
And finally, countries' shares of the top 1% of most-cited papers in the world:
The rest of the world falls a tiny bit. The UK, BRIS, and Japan + South Korea are in a clear descending hierarchy there as of 2022, China has absolutely exploded there since 2000 and has a slightly higher global share there than in the graph showing total amount of papers published. The US has still declined much more sharply than the EU, having had nearly 50% global share in 2000, but after being below it in the first graph of total amount of publications and the two being very close in the top 10% one, here it's clearly above the EU, showing that American research tends to be higher quality than European one, at least in terms of citations.
In terms of individual countries' publications' chances of being in the global 1%, we see the trend from before get even rockier. Albania has still stelarly grown, but compared to before, Moldova has completely collapsed. Ukraine has stagnated, while Montenegro and Serbia hasve declined. Japan has somewhat declined, but South Korea has actually grown. The US has significantly declined, as have, in the EU, the Netherlands and Denmark alongside a bunch of other countries facing less severe declines. The only major EU country that had grown there is Italy, with Spain stagnating while Germany and France of course declining. Ireland, Finland, Slovenia and Czechia have stagnated, while most of EE seems to have somewhat grown, even if Lithuania had declined.
