- 26 Sep 2022 06:05
#15248518
The 'innovation gap' frequently touted as the difference maker between American and Chinese economies is officially closed - China produces more studies, and more high-impact studies, than its rival. As education quality increases in China and India, it is expected that the US will eventually go back to third. It currently overperforms relative to its share of world population.
US researchers were more prolific in research into clinical medicine, China accounted for a high proportion of research into materials science and mathematics. Another paper, published by Wagner and others in 2020, concluded China’s research is slightly more innovative than the world average. That study tracked how often papers’ reference lists included atypical combinations of journals in disparate fields as a proxy for innovative ideas.
That being said: the study looks only at references from other papers; frequently used as a shorthand. Chinese papers may just be citing other Chinese papers in a bid to increase relative impact of their research. It also does not distinguish between papers led by Chinese researchers, or papers to which a Chinese research team contributed as a junior partner.
Nonetheless, the discussion of the 'innovation gap' is looking thinner as time goes on. Innovation can and does routinely happen in China.
The Guardian wrote:China has overtaken the US as the world leader in both scientific research output and “high impact” studies, according to a report published by Japan’s science and technology ministry.
The report, which was published by Japan’s National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (NISTP) on Tuesday, found that China now publishes the highest number of scientific research papers yearly, followed by the US and Germany.
The figures were based on yearly averages between 2018 and 2020, and drawn from data compiled by the analytics firm Clarivate.
The Japanese NISTP report also found that Chinese research comprised 27.2% of the world’s top 1% most frequently cited papers. The number of citations a research paper receives is a commonly used metric in academia. The more times a study is cited in subsequent papers by other researchers, the greater its “citation impact”.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... rch-output
The 'innovation gap' frequently touted as the difference maker between American and Chinese economies is officially closed - China produces more studies, and more high-impact studies, than its rival. As education quality increases in China and India, it is expected that the US will eventually go back to third. It currently overperforms relative to its share of world population.
US researchers were more prolific in research into clinical medicine, China accounted for a high proportion of research into materials science and mathematics. Another paper, published by Wagner and others in 2020, concluded China’s research is slightly more innovative than the world average. That study tracked how often papers’ reference lists included atypical combinations of journals in disparate fields as a proxy for innovative ideas.
That being said: the study looks only at references from other papers; frequently used as a shorthand. Chinese papers may just be citing other Chinese papers in a bid to increase relative impact of their research. It also does not distinguish between papers led by Chinese researchers, or papers to which a Chinese research team contributed as a junior partner.
Nonetheless, the discussion of the 'innovation gap' is looking thinner as time goes on. Innovation can and does routinely happen in China.