The National Science Foundation is a treasure trove of data about the state of science in the world and the US. One of its recent reports, Science and Engineering Indicators 2006 has been nicely summarized by Chemical and Engineering News in this article, which focuses on numbers of published scientific papers from the US and countries.

The article talks mainly about chemistry papers and journals, but there are a couple of interesting tables about science as a whole. Here are some highlights:

-Of the scientific papers from around the world (including the social and behavioral sciences), the percentage from the US has slowly but steadily slipped from 38.1 percent (1988) to 30.2 percent (2003).

-This decrease is happening across all fields in science except mathematics, and is especially stark in engineering/technology (42 percent in 1988 and 24 percent in 2003) and physics (29 percent in 1988 to 19 percent in 2003).

-The US is #12 in the world in the number of scientific papers per capita. Sweden is #1, followed by Switzerland, Israel, Finland and Denmark. Those Scandinavians love their science!