Trends in science and engineering output from China and India

摘要

China and India have together been called emerging giants in the fields of science and technology research1. Their strengths lie in (i) a large class of trained and skilled manpower, and (ii) a traditional importance placed on the importance of being a knowledge-based society. These strengths are together helping these two countries in renewed emphasis on science and engineering (S&E) research, resulting in an exponential growth in research output. We report here these two trends that are of significance and are especially important to policy makers. Figure 1 presents data on the total S&E output from each country. Data was obtained from the Thomson ISI Web of Science database which catalogues publications from over 5000 current and archived research S&E publications. Two sets of data are presented here. First, the closed symbols (read off the yaxis on the left) correspond to a graph of the data pertaining to the total number of publications from India and China during the years 1983–2008. This data includes all publications where at least one author on the publication was of an affiliation from that country. Secondly, the open symbols (read off the y-axis on the right) represent a graph of the data pertaining to the percentage of these total publications that originated from the top 10 research producing organizations of that country.