The UK government is proclaiming its researchers “the most productive and efficient in the G8”, following a newly released report.
Produced by Evidence for the government, the performance report compares papers and citations for UK researchers with other players, such as the USA, Germany, Japan and China.
“Once again, we have outperformed other nations in the G8 and secured our position as second in the world in scientific productivity,” says UK science minister Lord Drayson (press release).
While UK output fell to 7.9% of world papers, down from 9.3% in 1999, citations rose very slightly to 11.8% in 2008. Only the USA did better in citations for clinical, health, biological, environmental, and social sciences. In mathematics Germany pipped Blighty to second while China nosed ahead in engineering. Physical scientists need to pull their socks up though: you’re in fifth, behind Germany, China, Japan and the research behemoth that is the USA.
As ever, a picture is worth a thousand blog posts, so below the fold are the ‘research footprints’ for various nations in 2008 (previous figures for comparison can be found in the previous report).
Blue dotted line is group average.
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| UK |
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| Germany | Japan | USA |