BEIJING: The number of highly influential scientists on the Chinese mainland has increased for a fifth consecutive year, signaling the nation’s rising academic influence, according to an annual report by the global analytical firm Clarivate Analytics.
Experts said the trend shows that China is steadily catching up with the United States regarding high-level scholarly contributions, but the gap between the countries remains substantial, particularly in fields related to life and medical sciences.
On Nov 15, Clarivate revealed its 2022 list of highly cited researchers and academics who have demonstrated a “disproportionate level of significant and broad influence” in their fields. This year’s list featured 6,938 scientists from 69 countries and regions, spread across 21 research fields from engineering to social sciences.
These scientists had produced papers that ranked in the top 1 percent by the number of citations from 2011 to last year, a prestigious percentile typically reserved for groundbreaking or trend-setting discoveries. Academic citation is a widely used indicator of the cited paper’s influence and utility.
The US was home to 2,764 world-class scientists this year, accounting for 38.3 percent of the list. Although the US leads the world in research influence, its share of the entire list has decreased from 43.3 percent in 2018.
–The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
