And have been for a week before I noticed it
.
www.scimagojr.com
For those of you who don't know what this is, basically, it's a database showing the amount of scientific documents, whether citable ones like research papers (which are like 90%+ of them), or records and overviews from presentations and workshops and so on, a given country has produced.
This year's results are rather interesting.
1) China is widening its lead and reaching levels of dominance not seen in decades.
Not much of a surprise there, the difference between China and its closest competitor (USA) has been continuously increasing ever since the former overtook the latter in scientific output in 2020. However, as this hadn't slowed down at all, China is not only widening the gap between the two of them (three of them if you count EU as a single entity), but it's starting to reach insane levels of scientific dominance.
As of 2024, China has produced 28.03% of world's scientific output, up from 25.75% in 2023 and from 21.42% in just 2021, a 25% growth in not even five years.
This is a level of dominance by a single country that hadn't been there for a while. As far as we can see from the data there, the US had a 30%+ share in the first year recorded there (1996), and then a 29%+ one for the rest of the 90s.
At the speed China's output is increasing, there's a pretty good chance it will have a 30%+ share for this year. That will have a good chance of being the largest share by a single country ever recorded in this database, probably only dwarfed by US' share in the preceding years at the peak of its power in the early and mid 90s, and even that probably just for a year or two before China overtakes even that.
Just think back to how ungodly powerful and dominant the US was in the 90s after its only sort-of rival collapsed. Not even at that peak of its power did the US dominate world science as much as China almost certainly will very soon.
2) The EU and the US continue stagnating and languishing below their 2019 peak.
Continuing from the above, it's not just that China is relatively gaining in percentage terms while the US and the EU are relatively losing, the latter two have actually, for years by now, been unable to reach where they were before Covid in absolute terms. In 2019, those two produced, so far, the most scientific documents in their history.
View: https://x.com/felixdemoya/status/1909294069559222379#m
3) Russia's output seems to be imploding and the country is back behind South Korea.
I don't know whether this is because of any fundamental problems or shortcomings or just due to the retarded war, but Russia's scientific output has been falling for the last few years, and by 2024, it just fell so low that Russia is back where it was before 2016, when South Korea's scientific output was bigger than theirs.
In fact, Russia's recent fall is so crazy, that other Eastern European's countries percentage share of Eastern European scientific output has actually risen despite many of them, such as Slovakia, producing fewer documents in 2024 than in 2023, solely because of the fall in Russia's output making their shares of the regional output proportionally greater.
4) Israel continues its steep, decades-long decline.
Not much more needs to be said.
This is one of the most underreported trends in scientific publishing in my opinion. In 1996, Israel produced almost 45% of the entire Middle Eastern scientific output, since the other countries there barely produced anything. This had fallen every year since that as MENA countries caught up with the rest of the world, and in 2024, Israel had produced just 7.74% of the region's total scientific output, and their decline doesn't seem to be stopping any time soon.
.SJR - International Science Ranking
www.scimagojr.com
For those of you who don't know what this is, basically, it's a database showing the amount of scientific documents, whether citable ones like research papers (which are like 90%+ of them), or records and overviews from presentations and workshops and so on, a given country has produced.
This year's results are rather interesting
.1) China is widening its lead and reaching levels of dominance not seen in decades.
Not much of a surprise there, the difference between China and its closest competitor (USA) has been continuously increasing ever since the former overtook the latter in scientific output in 2020. However, as this hadn't slowed down at all, China is not only widening the gap between the two of them (three of them if you count EU as a single entity), but it's starting to reach insane levels of scientific dominance.
As of 2024, China has produced 28.03% of world's scientific output, up from 25.75% in 2023 and from 21.42% in just 2021, a 25% growth in not even five years
.This is a level of dominance by a single country that hadn't been there for a while. As far as we can see from the data there, the US had a 30%+ share in the first year recorded there (1996), and then a 29%+ one for the rest of the 90s.
At the speed China's output is increasing, there's a pretty good chance it will have a 30%+ share for this year. That will have a good chance of being the largest share by a single country ever recorded in this database, probably only dwarfed by US' share in the preceding years at the peak of its power in the early and mid 90s, and even that probably just for a year or two before China overtakes even that.
Just think back to how ungodly powerful and dominant the US was in the 90s after its only sort-of rival collapsed. Not even at that peak of its power did the US dominate world science as much as China almost certainly will very soon
.2) The EU and the US continue stagnating and languishing below their 2019 peak.
Continuing from the above, it's not just that China is relatively gaining in percentage terms while the US and the EU are relatively losing, the latter two have actually, for years by now, been unable to reach where they were before Covid in absolute terms. In 2019, those two produced, so far, the most scientific documents in their history.
View: https://x.com/felixdemoya/status/1909294069559222379#m
3) Russia's output seems to be imploding and the country is back behind South Korea.
I don't know whether this is because of any fundamental problems or shortcomings or just due to the retarded war, but Russia's scientific output has been falling for the last few years, and by 2024, it just fell so low that Russia is back where it was before 2016, when South Korea's scientific output was bigger than theirs.
In fact, Russia's recent fall is so crazy, that other Eastern European's countries percentage share of Eastern European scientific output has actually risen despite many of them, such as Slovakia
, producing fewer documents in 2024 than in 2023, solely because of the fall in Russia's output making their shares of the regional output proportionally greater.4) Israel continues its steep, decades-long decline.
Not much more needs to be said
.This is one of the most underreported trends in scientific publishing in my opinion. In 1996, Israel produced almost 45% of the entire Middle Eastern scientific output, since the other countries there barely produced anything. This had fallen every year since that as MENA countries caught up with the rest of the world, and in 2024, Israel had produced just 7.74% of the region's total scientific output, and their decline doesn't seem to be stopping any time soon
.
