World’s top five in science papers

CHINAhasbecomeone of the world’s top five countries that have the highest total citation of scientific and technology papers.

OnFriday, the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China published its latest report on the performance of Chinese sci-tech papers, with data updated in September.

Since 1987, the annual report has been a source of decision-making support for government agencies.

The report, the Statistical Data of Chinese S&T Papers, showed Chinese researchers published 1.14 million International sci-tech papers since 2003, ranking second place in the world. These papers had a total citation of nearly 7.1 million times, ranking it fifth, moving up one place from 2012.

“In the country’s science and technology development plan during the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15), we set the goal of entering the top five countries for paper citation by 2015. Now it seems we have achieved the goal ahead of schedule,” said He Defang, director of the Institute of

In terms of papers’ total citation times, we are the world’s fifth, while in terms of highly-cited papers, we are fourth. — WU YISHAN

Scientific and Technical Information of China .

The four other countries are the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom and Japan.

The citation of papers is an indicator of the quality of the paper. The total paper citation can reflect a country’s general research capacity, He explained.

Meanwhile, China produced 9,524 highly cited papers (the top 1% mostcited) between 2003 and 2013, ranking it fourth in the world.

“In terms of papers’ total citation times we are fifth, while in terms of highly cited papers we are fourth. It reflects the fact the best papers in China are as good as those at the international level,” said Wu Yishan, deputy director of the institute.

The average citation rate of China’s international papers was 6.92 times each paper in the decade since 2003, while the global average citation rate was 10.69 times.

Yet in 15 specific research fields, including chemistry, materials science, engineering, mathematics and computing science, China has a distinct advantage: The total number of citations in these fields are among the world’s top 10.

To encourage researchers to focus more on the quality of papers, the institute has begun changing its statistical indicators.

The establishment of Forerunners 5000, also known as the F5000, is a major project carried out to promote quality-focused papers on an open access platform that includes the most influential papers published in domestic journals. — China Daily / Asia News Network