International Indicators 

 of Science and Technology 



INDICATOR HIGHLIGHTS 



The proportion of the Gross National 

 Product (GNP) spent for R&D has declined 

 steadily over the last decade in the United 

 States, while growing substantially in the 

 U.S.S.R., West Germany, and Japan; in 1973, 

 the fraction of GNP directed to R&D was 2.4 

 percent in the United States, compared with 

 3.1 percent for the U.S.S.R., 2.4 percent for 

 West Germany, and 1.9 percent for Japan. i 



The number of scientists and engineers 

 engaged in R&D per 10,000 population 

 declined in the United States after 1969 but 

 continued to grow in all other countries 

 studied; by 1973, this number was 25 per 

 10,000 for the United States, 18 for West 

 Germany, 19 for Japan (1971), and 37 for the 

 U.S.S.R.i 



All major R&D-performing countries re- 

 duced their proportion of government R&D 

 expenditures for national defense between 

 1961 and the early 1970's, while either 

 maintaining or expanding expenditures for 

 the advancement of science and economic 

 development; the United States had the 

 largest fraction of expenditures for national 

 defense and the smallest for the latter two 

 areas throughout the period. (Data for the 

 U.S.S.R. are not available). 



The United States was the largest producer 

 of the scientific literature sampled 

 throughout the 1965-73 period in all fields 

 except chemistry and mathematics, where 

 its share was second to that of the U.S.S.R.; 

 in recent years, however, U.S. research 

 publications in the fields of chemistry, 

 engineering, and physics have declined 

 slightly in both absolute and relative terms. 



1 Data regarding the U.S.S.R. should be treated as gross 

 estimates; limited information and differences in basic 

 definitions make international comparisons involving the 

 U.S.S.R. particularly tenuous. (See the following text for 

 discussion of this point). 



Citation indices of U.S. scientific research 

 equal or exceed those of other major 

 research-performing countries based on a 

 large sample of the 1973 literature; the 

 United States ranked highest in the fields of 

 chemistry and physics. 



U.S. scientists have received a larger overall 

 number of Nobel Prizes in the sciences 

 (physics, chemistry, and physiology- 

 medicine) than any other country; awards to 

 U.S. scientists, however, declined after the 

 1951-60 decade, primarily as the result of 

 fewer prizes for research in physics. 



The United States had a favorable but 

 declining "patent balance" between 1966 and 

 1973; the decline of 30 percent was due 

 primarily to increases in the number of 

 patents awarded by the United States to 

 Japan and West Germany, and to decreases 

 in patents granted to the United States by 

 Canada and the United Kingdom. 



A majority of a sample of major 

 technological innovations of the past twenty 

 years were produced by the United States; 

 the proportion of innovations of U.S. origin, 

 however, declined from a high of 80 percent 

 in the late 1950's to some 55-60 percent since 

 the mid-1960's, while other countries— 

 particularly Japan and West Germany — 

 increased their shares. 



The United States had an increasingly 

 positive balance of payments from the sale of 

 technical "know-how" (patents, licenses and 

 manufacturing rights) over the 1960-73 

 period, with four to five times more 

 technical "know-how" sold to other nations 

 than purchased from them; the rising net 

 receipts to the United States were due 

 largely to purchases by Japan after the mid- 

 1960's. 



The level of U.S. productivity (Gross 

 Domestic Product per employed civilian) 



