Asian Scientist (Oct. 1, 2013) – China is now ranked fifth among countries that have the highest total number of citations for scientific and technology papers.
This was revealed in the latest annual report by the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China which was published last week.
According to the 2013 report, Chinese researchers have published a total of 1.14 million scientific and technology papers since 2003. This is the second highest number in the world.
These papers were cited a total of nearly 7.1 million times, making China the fifth ranked country in terms of citations, moving up one place from 2012.
The number of citations for a paper is an indicator of its quality while the total paper citation can reflect a country’s general research capacity.
China now trails the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom and Japan in the number of total citations.
“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 Scientific and Technical Information of China .
Meanwhile, China produced 9,524 ‘highly cited’ international papers (among the top 1 percent most-cited) between 2003 and 2013, ranking it fourth in the world.
“In terms of papers’ total citation times we are the world’s 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.
However, the citation figures also indicate that medium-level papers in China are less influential than the world average.
The average citation rate of China’s international papers was 6.92 times per paper, while the global average citation rate was 10.69 times.
The institute is now exploring how it can encourage researchers to focus on publishing high quality papers and also promote influential papers published in domestic journals.
——
Source: Chinese Academy of Sciences; Photo: maltman23/Flickr/CC.
Disclaimer: This article does not necessarily reflect the views of AsianScientist or its staff.
