Interactive by Jan Willem Tulp
What makes one country better than another in science? It's not an easy thing to measure. Publishing research papers is a good way to get a bead on basic research, but it doesn't say much about whether a nation is taking advantage of those good ideas. For this, other metrics come into play. Patents give a clue as to how well a country is exploiting its ideas for commercial gain. What a nation spends on R&D captures not only what universities and government research programs do but also the contribution from industry. How many students a nation educates in science and technology disciplines is a key metric, but little data are available.
The rankings of the top 40 nations in this interactive are based on preliminary data from Digital Science, a sister company to Nature Publishing Group (which owns Scientific American). It has assembled a database of research papers published in top peer-reviewed journals around the world and has organized them by nation of origin. The table above shows the rankings for this metric and others—patents, R&D expenditures and doctoral candidates produced.
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6 Comments
Add CommentCorporate research in the U.S. is going to get worse because President Obama and the rest of the left have said they want to eliminate that tax right off from business. General motors, the Company President Obama "saved" has already moved its research department to China.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLe chemin des poésies.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUne rime
éphémère quand
le chant du
matin dessine
le sourire
des chansons
désolées.
Francesco Sinibaldi
Quality seminal research publications in international journals may make a country better than another country.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, this may not be stringent test.
S. N. Tiwary
Director
Let's try a new question: Which country's science makes humanity better? If country 'A' has one thousand patents for improved nuclear weapon detonators and country 'B' has one patent for curing cancer, which country is scientifically 'better'?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat is a much more complex question as well as a ludicrous comparison. It does; however, argue for weighting the scoring. This approach also brings some philosophy into the discussion. I love to see the heat versus light quotient whenever philosophy and politics make an entrance :)
Who pays the tax for the business write off I wonder?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen it comes to ranking the science of entire countries, one has to be careful on what metrics and criteria to use. To rank the contributions of each country one has to consider not only applied science, but also theoretical science. Not only Nobel Prizes but also publications, groups, university, enterprise contributions and many other factors. It is not easy to come up with a fair ranking when there so many variables to consider in this model!
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