With the emergence of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) in the world economy, the traditional leading roles of the West including the United States and EU nations have been challenged. China, for instance, is now the second largest economy in the world with $8.22 trillion GDP (World Bank 2013). A similar situation is happening in science and technology. On December 2, 2013, China successfully launched the Long March 3B rocket carrying the Chang’e-3 probe and Yutu lunar rover. In terms of world publications in science China has been the second largest producer since 2006 (Zhou and Leydesdorff 2008). Statistics of the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (ISTIC 2013) show that China contributed 12.08% of publications included in the Science Citation Index (SCI) of Thomson Reuters in 2012. It is clear that China has become a major player in world science (e.g., Zhou and Leydesdorff 2006; Glänzel, Debackere, and Meyer 2008; ISTIC 2013; see also Le and Tang in this volume, Chapter 2). The performance of other Asian countries, such as Japan, South Korea, and India, is also remarkable. In fact, Leydesdorff and Zhou (2005) noted the change and the possible shift of gravity center of the world science system in 2005.

Is it true that the world of science is indeed moving to the East? The current chapter will try to answer the question from the perspective of bibliometrics. Comparative analysis will be done between the West and the East. The United States, England, Germany, and France are selected to represent the West because they produce most publications in the region. China, Japan, South Korea, and India are chosen to represent the East for the same reason. Analysis will focus mainly on investment in research and development (R&D) and scientific productivity and impact in terms of publications. Data from the OECD are used for analysis of R&D investment. Publication data from the Web of Science (WoS) of Thomson Reuters are used to map the overall performance of the selected countries. Further investigations are based on data from the Essential Science Indicators (ESI) of Thomson Reuters. In R&D analysis, India will not be included because it is not covered by the OECD data. Data for the United Kingdom are also somewhat complex. For R&D analysis we used data of the United Kingdom. For investigation based on publication data, only England is included because both the WoS and the ESI only label publications from the four parts of the United Kingdom (i.e., England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland) separately without integrating them together under the United Kingdom. Considering England is by far the largest publication producer of the United Kingdom, we use England to represent the United Kingdom.

Investment in Research and Development

R&D includes systematic activities combining both basic and applied research. “Research” is to identify new knowledge and ideas, and “development” is to turn the ideas into tangible products or processes. As defined by the US National Science Foundation (2013), applied research is systematic study to gain knowledge or understanding necessary to determine the means by which a recognized and specific need may be met. In contrast, basic research advances the knowledge of science without an explicit, anticipated commercial outcome. R&D activities are performed by both the public and the business sectors. The R&D performed in the business sector is now larger than the R&D performed in the public sector. As an important form of R&D outcomes, scientific publications are more likely to reflect the public component of R&D. R&D can be funded by the government and performed by either/both public or industrial sectors. To a large extent, however, it continues to be true that public R&D more likely generates publications while business R&D generates patents, although public R&D is generating more patents and business R&D is generating more scientific articles than in the past. As this chapter uses publications as research output, the OECD data of public R&D expenditure will be used in the current section.

Public R&D Expenditure

R&D investment plays a significant role in innovation and economic growth. For example, Robbins and Moylan (2007) estimated that to real GDP growth R&D contributes approximately 0.20% of the average 2.9% growth, or about 7.1% of the average growth rate from 2002 to 2007 in the United States. In fact, R&D expenditure has long been an important indicator of investment in science and technology (e.g., the OECD Science, Technology, and R&D Statistics). Investment in R&D can be reflected by two aspects, namely expenditure and human talents or manpower. A nation’s R&D expenditure relative to its GDP is usually considered as an important indicator for measuring the capacity and aspiration of a nation to science.

Based on public R&D expenditure of the seven countries representing the West and the East, two groups can be classified, with US$15 billion as a divide. The leading group is represented by the United States, China, Japan, and Germany. The United States takes the absolute and unshakable lead with a continuous increase (except for a slight drop in 2010). The growing investment of China is impressive. It has replaced Japan and Germany as the second largest investor since 2007. In the 10 years 2001–2010, Germany and Japan had spent the same in terms of public R&D (Figure 5.1a).

South Korea, France, and the United Kingdom are in the second group. France takes the lead with relatively stable public R&D expenditure in ten years. The growing investment of South Korean is remarkable. It surpassed the United Kingdom in 2009 and is about to catch up with France. Slight increase in the United Kingdom is visible but not as significant as that of South Korea (Figure 5.1b).

Percentage share of GDP is often used to eliminate size effect of different economies. In terms of the share of public R&D expenditure in a nation’s GDP, four groups can be identified. South Korea and the United States are in the first group and take the lead. Germany and France spend similarly and are in the second group. The United Kingdom and Japan are in the third group, whereas China alone is in the last group (Figure 5.2).

R&D Manpower

R&D activities are mainly conducted by researchers who engage in the conception or creation of new knowledge, products, processes, methods, and systems, and in the management of the projects concerned. Numbers of researchers in the seven countries can also be classified into two groups (Figures 5.3a and 5.3b) with Germany now falling into the second group. Countries in the first group (United States, China, and Japan) have over 600,000 researchers. The United States and Japan seem to have reached their manpower capacity, whereas China continued to enlarge its research team until 2009 when a significant drop happened (Figure 5.3a).

The number of researchers in all countries in the second group has grown continuously, although with significantly smaller scale than those in the first group. South Korea and Germany are especially remarkable. South Korea had already exceeded France in 2007 and the United Kingdom in 2010. France continues to grow although with smaller steps. The United Kingdom seems to have reached its saturation level since 2005 (Figure 5.3b).

Similar to R&D expenditure being dependent on a nation’s GDP, the number of researchers of a nation also relies on the size of employed population. In terms of number of researchers per thousand employed, South Korea has experienced fast growth and took the first position by replacing Japan in 2010. Among the Western countries, France and Germany show growth and the United Kingdom went down slightly after five stable years. The ratio of the United States has also gone down slowly (Figure 5.4). Compared to its huge number of employed population, the number of researchers in China is the lowest (Figures 5.3a and 5.4).

In terms of absolute value (e.g., R&D expenditure and size of research team), China takes the second position. When a relative measurement is applied (e.g., ratio of R&D to GDP, number of researchers per thousand employed), China lags far behind the other six countries. The contrary performance of China implies a potential or option for China to further increase its research investment.

Leading Players in Science Publication

The Web of Science (WoS) provides users with access to current and retrospective content. It covers over 12,000 worldwide high-quality journals including Open Access journals and over 150,000 conference proceedings in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities across more than 250 disciplines (http://thomsonreuters.com/web-of-science/). All document types published in 2003–2012 are used for mapping the overall performance of the selected countries. For further analysis, data from the Essential Science Indicators (ESI) are used. The ESI provides data of top 1% highly cited papers in each of 22 subject categories, from which information on the most influential individuals, institutions, papers, and publications in each of the 22 subject categories can be obtained.

An Overview

In 2003–2012, publication productivity in terms of number of publications of the West (represented by the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and France) is significantly (1.3 times) higher than that of the East (represented by China, Japan, India, and South Korea) with the United States taking the absolute lead. Productivity of England and Germany is almost the same and is significantly higher than that of France. In the East, China and Japan are the two largest producers. South Korea and India are at lower scale in terms of productivity (Table 5.1).

The West: 8,349,174		The East: 3,587,433
United States	5,195,098	China	1,646,564
England	1,174,979	Japan	1,063,209
Germany	1,174,977	South Korea	446,166
France	804,120	India	431,494

From the perspective of world share of publications, the selected eight countries contribute over 66% of the world total. Performances of the United States and China are most distinctive. With the rapid increase of Chinese publications the United States lost world share by 4.7% from 2003 to 2012. The huge gap between China and the United States has been narrowed significantly. Nonetheless, the absolute leading position of the United States is still unshakable (Figure 5.5a).

In 10 years, Germany and England have kept similar and stable world shares. The world share of France has also been kept stable but significantly lower than those of Germany and the United Kingdom. In the East, Japan is a bigger loser. In 10 years, Japan has lost nearly 2% of its world share. South Korea and India grow in a similar way with similar world share of publications. (For greater clarity, see Figure 5.5b which excludes the United States and China.)

Highly Cited Publications

Based on publications in 2003–2012 in the ESI, the productivity of the West is 3.7 times that of the East. In terms of highly cited papers, the gap between the West and the East is much wider compared to that in overall publications included in the WoS. In the Western four countries, the United States takes the absolute lead. England contributes slightly higher than Germany. In the East, China also takes the lead but only slightly higher than France. Highly cited papers from Japan total about half of Germany’s number. Each of the four Western countries produces 1.1–1.2% highly cited papers of its total in the WoS, which is twice that of the Eastern countries (Table 5.2).

The West: 98,863			The East: 20,840
	ESI	ESI/WoS		ESI	ESI/WoS
United States	61,719	1.2%	China	10,010	0.6%
England	14,609	1.2%	Japan	6,351	0.6%
Germany	13,747	1.2%	South Korea	2,675	0.6%
France	8,788	1.1%	India	1,804	0.4%

In terms of annual performance in producing highly cited papers, the United States takes the absolute lead. England and Germany have kept the second and third position until 2012 when China slighly surpassed England (in 2012 China produced 2023 highly cited papers whereas England produced 2012. In the seven countries excluding the United States, China grew fastest in producing highly cited papers and has replaced Japan’s leading position in the East since 2006. South Korea and India have kept their relative position in the 10 year period (Figures 5.6a and 5.6b).

To exclude size effect of publications, we calculated percentage share of highly cited versus WoS publications of the corresponding countries (Figure 5.7). A clear gap exists between the West and the East, although ratios of both groups have been growing. In the West, England performs the best with the fastest-growing rate, whereas the United States grows slowest, and thus, drops from the first to the last position from 2003 to 2012. In the East, India performs the worst in the same period. China, Japan, and South Korea progressed similarly: no improvement happened until 2010 when the ESI/WoS ratio started to rise from around 0.50.

Looking into highly cited publications among the 22 subject categories in the ESI, the West has played a major role in each field. In fields such as psychiatry/psychology, social sciences, neuroscience and behavior, economics and business, clinical medicine, as well as microbiology, the Western four countries contributed over 90% of publications from the eight countries. The East is doing relatively well both in kinds of “applied” sciences (e.g., engineering) and more basic science (i.e., mathematics and physics), but is lagging behind in the social sciences and humanities (Figure 5.8).

Publication Impact in the ESI

Number of citations received by publications is used to measure impact of publications. Overall impact is the total number of citations to publications from a country. In 2003–2012, overall impact of the West is more than six times that of the East. The United States takes the absolute lead. Furthermore, each of the selected Western countries has higher overall impact than each of the Eastern countries. Japan takes the lead among the Eastern countries. China only stands in the second position although producing the most ESI papers among the Eastern countries (Table 5.3).

The West: 17,151,529		The East: 2,729,359
United States	10,976,827	Japan	1,148,466
England	2,500,516	China	999,576
Germany	2,221,471	South Korea	354,116
France	1,452,715	India	227,201

Variation exists among highly cited publications, especially among publications from the East and the West. Figure 5.9 shows citations per paper (CPP) of the West and the East. Because the ESI only provides accumulative citation counts, publications in earlier years have more chances of being cited and thus may have higher citation counts. For this reason, comparison has to be done in the same year so as to exclude the different time effect. Figure 5.9 also shows that the gap between the West and the East in terms of CPP is narrowing over time. For example, the CPP in the West and the East were respectively 26.4 and 26.6 in 2012 and in 2003 were respectively 356.6 and 305.5. No gap exists in 2012 but in 2003 the difference was 51. Nevertheless, it would be too imprudent to conclude that the gap between the West and the East has disappeared in 2012 because it takes time for citation information to be published and indexed in a database like the WoS. In general, it needs time to prove whether difference exists.

Leading Players in International Collaboration

Over the past decades, the number of internationally collaborated publications have increased significantly (e.g., He 2009; Leydesdorff and Sun 2009; Zhou and Glänzel 2010; Mattsson et al. 2010). Co-authorship in publications is widely considered as a reliable proxy for scientific collaboration (Franceschet and Costantini 2010). Various indicators have been proposed for measuring international collaboration. For instance, Garg and Padhi (2001) proposed Domestic Collaborative Index (DCI) and International Collaboration Index (ICI), Zhou and Tian (2014) classify international collaboration into domestically-led and internationally-led so as to further identify possible variations between the two types of collaboration. In exploring determinants of research collaboration Plotnikova and Rake (2014) made two conclusions: (1) geographical distance is negatively related to the intensity of international research collaborations, and (2) cognitive proximity, institutional proximity, social proximity, and cultural proximity have a positive relation with the intensity of international collaboration. In the current chapter, the Activity Index (AI) suggested by Frame (1977) and elaborated by Schubert and Braun (1986) will be used to explore bilateral collaboration based on institution names in the byline of papers.

Based on Salton’s measure (Glänzel and Winterhager 1992), bilateral collaboration strength r_ik can be measured by the following formula:

where n_ik is the number of co-authored papers with addresses of two countries with n_i and n_k total publications respectively. It is clear that r_ik is a relative indicator for measuring international collaboration.

In 2003–2012, the United States was the leading country in bilateral collaboration among the other seven countries, with major partners from the West (i.e., England, Germany, and France). In collaboration with the four Eastern countries, the United States collaborated mostly with Japan, with China as the second partner. For England, however, distance still matters in terms of determining partners: European countries (Germany and France) are significantly more important partners of England than Eastern countries. Western countries are the first collaboration options of Eastern countries. Unlike collaboration between European countries, bilateral collaboration between the Eastern countries is significantly weak (Table 5.4).

Conclusions and Discussion

In R&D investment, China and South Korea advance the fastest in terms of absolute R&D expenditure, whereas South Korea and Japan take the lead measured by a relative indicator (i.e., percentage share of R&D expenditure to GDP). Regarding human resources in R&D, China and South Korea also show the fastest growth. South Korea even takes the lead in terms of full-time equivalent researchers per thousand employed among the eight countries under study. The ambition of the East in science is clearly shown with South Korea’s performance the most outstanding among the four Eastern countries. The advancing momentum of China is also impressive. Although China has the least value of full-time equivalent researchers per thousand employed among the eight countries, its huge population implies a potential of enlarging its R&D reservoir of manpower. As a country developed earlier than the other Eastern countries, Japan seems to have reached its extreme in R&D investment. Compared with the Eastern countries, growth momentum of R&D investment in the West is weaker. An important reason for the different momentum in R&D investment between the West and the East is the different starting point. The West has entered a relatively stable stage whereas the East, except Japan, is still in its catching-up stage.

In the total volume of publications in 2003–2012, the West contributes significantly higher than the East with the United States taking the absolute lead. Looking into the annual publications, however, the rapid growth of publications from China, together with South Korea and India, has significantly disturbed the balance of world publication, with the United States and Japan fast losing their world share. In terms of production of highly cited publications, however, the disturbance caused by the rise of China, South Korea, and India is less fierce. In other words, the gap between the West and the East is still huge. In 2003–2012, over 1.1% of WoS publications produced by the West are highly cited, whereas the ratio of the East was only 0.4–0.6%. The United States again takes the absolute lead in producing highly cited publications. After the United States are the United Kingdom and Germany. In fact, all the eight countries have produced a growing number of highly cited publications.

Field distribution of highly cited publications shows strong and balanced development among fields in the West. In the East, however, this is not the case. In psychiatry/psychology, social sciences, neuroscience and behavior, economics and business, clinical medicine, as well as microbiology, the East is extremely weak. Only in materials science, engineering, and chemistry, does the East perform relatively better, but with significantly lower share than the West. The situation in terms of publication impact is also the same.

In international collaboration, the United States has strong bilateral relations with the other countries except India. Japan is the United States’ most favorite partner in the East. Collaboration between European countries is the strongest, which may be partly attributed to the EU Framework Programme. Collaboration between the Eastern countries is rather weak compared with that between the Western countries. Western countries are the first option of the East in selecting collaboration partners, partly because of the leading role of the West in science. Collaborating with the West brings more benefit than collaborating with countries from the East. With the popularization of international collaboration as well as the rising capacity of the East, both the publication productivity and impact of the East is expected to increase. The current weakness of East-East co-authorship, however, is expected to continue. In other words, it will take time for significant change to occur in East-East collaboration.

To conclude, world science is still led by the West with the United States taking the absolute lead. The East has been emerging with China and South Korea the most dynamic countries. Nonetheless, the scientific impact of the East is not yet as remarkable as it shows in R&D investment and publication production. The hysteretic effect between publishing and citation may partly explain such a phenomenon. Japan seems to have reached its potential and India has not yet woken up. To quicken the catching-up steps of the East, collaborating with the West can after all be an important option.

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