The Most Innovative Countries In Biology And Medicine; U.S. Leads the Pack

When it comes to publishing research about the natural world, the United States is the dominant player. The U.S. published more than 1.14 million scientific articles about biology and medicine between 2005 and 2009, publishing 250,000 papers (29% of the worldwide total) in 2009 alone. That’s more than quadruple the number of publications produced by China or the United Kingdom. Papers published by U.S. researchers were more likely to be cited in the scientific literature than those in any country except the Netherlands or Switzerland. This means they are important enough that other researchers feel the need to reference them in their own scientific papers. Since the number of other works any paper can cite is limited, this is a good measure of the quality of U.S. research. The below chart shows how much a paper’s country of origin increases or decreases the odds of it being cited — with 1 being no effect. Not surprisingly, other countries are growing their output more quickly, with Brazil, China, and India all increasing their output by more than 11% annually over this time period.

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