Reviews in obstetrics & gynecology goes global: building ties with china. (2011)

The United States, Europe, and Japan have long dominated worldwide research and development (R&D), but their dominance in this arena is increasingly being challenged by emerging economies and, above all, by China. This is the conclusion reached by the latest scientific report from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).1 The data in support of this assertion are compelling. In 1990, the “big three” carried out 95% of the world’s research, but this decreased to 76% by 2007, the last year that the UNESCO report measured.

This global shift in research productivity is no accident. In 2007, the world spent 1.7% of overall gross domestic product (GDP) on R&D, which is the same percentage as 5 years earlier (although expenditure increased in absolute terms from $790.3 billion in 2002 to $1145.7 billion in 2007). But this statistic doesn’t tell the whole story. Whereas gross domestic expenditure on R&D (GERD) as an expression of GDP changed little between 2002 and 2007 in both the United States (from 2.81% to 2.67%) and the European Union (from 1.82% to 1.83%), expenditure in China increased by 44% during this same time period (from 1.07% to 1.54%) and plans are already in place to increase this expenditure further to 2.5% of GDP by 2020. China’s increase in R&D expenditure is already starting to pay dividends. Specifically:


China’s share of world GERD increased from 5.0% in 2002 to 8.9% in 2007, which far exceeded its share of world GDP (which increased from 7.9% to 10.7% during this same time period).


China is responsible for two-thirds of the increase in researchers in the developing world over the past 5 years, and is now one of the world’s biggest reservoirs of R&D personnel. In absolute terms, the number of researchers in China increased from 810,500 in 2002 to 1.59 million in 2008. And China plans to recruit an additional 2000 foreigners into its research laboratories and institutes within the next 5 to 10 years through an aggressive recruitment initiative known as the Thousand Talents Program.


China has also increased its proportion of the world’s researchers. This increase is so astounding that, by 2007, 20% of the entire world’s research talent was located in China. This is a similar proportion to that found in the United States and the European Union.



An increase in the overall number of researchers is all very well, but what about their productivity and the quality of their work? One indicator of academic prowess is how much a country’s researchers publish. Between 2002 and 2008, the overall number of publications recorded in Thomson Reuters’ Science Citation Index (SCI) grew by 34.5% from 733,305 to 986,099 worldwide. The United States still has more scientific articles recorded in the SCI than any other country, but its share fell from 30.9% in 2002 to 27.7% in 2008. Japan’s share also fell (from 10.0% to 7.6%) as did that of the European Union (from 39.6% to 36.5%). In contrast, the number of publications emanating from China doubled during that same time period (to 104,968), representing an average growth rate of 17.3% per annum, and its share of the world’s publications increased from 4.5% in 2002 to 10.1% in 2007 (see Figure 1). In 2000, it was ranked eighth in the world in terms of publications according to SCI. By 2007, it had climbed to third place.



Figure 1

Annual scientific publications by country as a percentage of the world’s total. Reprinted with permission from Web of Science® via the Thomson Reuters Web of KnowledgeSM.



Another indicator of research quality is citation index. In this regard, China fares less well. According to the Essential Science Indicators Database, the average manuscript published in the United States was cited 14.3 times between 1998 and 2008, whereas the average Chinese research paper was cited only 4.6 times. Whether this represents poor quality of the Chinese publications or an historic bias for English-language journals in America, Europe, and Japan remains to be clarified. Regardless, the size of Asia’s population and the recent growth in research investment and productivity has led UNESCO to speculate that it will become “the dominant scientific continent in the coming years.”1

In keeping with this global shift in RD Zhanjun Pang, MD, PhD, Associate Professor in the Division of Gynecologic Oncology at Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University; and Guoyang Luo, MD, PhD, a maternal-fetal medicine physician-scientist and Director of Prenatal Diagnosis at Danbury Hospital, an affiliate of Yale University. This affiliation allows Reviews in Obstetrics & Gynecology to expand beyond the United States and reach a wider international audience. We look forward to strengthening this relationship in the months and years ahead.