tion helps to ensure that the reports have some 

 degree of scientific or technical significance. 



Indicators based on research reports, how- 

 ever, have several limitations when used for 

 international comparisons: the quantity of such 

 reports may be influenced substantially by the 

 journals selected for examination,' 2 by national 

 customs regarding the publishing of research 

 papers, by the availability of funds for preparing 

 and printing papers, by journal refereeing and 

 publishing policies, etc. These and other 

 limitations provide good reason for caution in 

 interpreting such indicators. 



The indicators presented in this section 

 provide measures of: (1) the proportion of the 

 world's research literature in selected scientific 

 areas produced by the United States and other 

 major research-performing countries; (2) the 

 distribution of research literature among fields 

 of science in each country; and (3) the influence 

 of the literature produced in each field by each 

 country. 



National origins of scientific literature. 



Estimates of the literature produced by 

 researchers in each country were based upon 

 counts of articles, letters, and notes published in 

 some 500 journals covered by the Science Cilation 

 Index IS.C.}.)'^ over the period 1965-73, 

 supplemented by data from various abstracting 

 services. !■• The journals included in the set were 

 those which were most highly cited in the total 

 1965 literature, regardless of field. The national 

 origin of the literature was determined by the 

 country of the first author of each scientific 

 paper. The results are presented in figure 1-6.^5 



The United States produced a larger propor- 

 tion of the 1973 scientific literature in this 

 sample of 492 journals than any other country in 

 these fields: physics, engineering, psychology, 

 molecular biology, and systematic biology. In the 

 fields of chemistry and mathematics, however. 



12 The representativeness of a journal set only ap- 

 proximates the representativeness of the articles themselves 

 because of the varying sizes of journals and other reasons. 

 The next Science Indiccilan report will examme this represen- 

 tiveness in detail- 



1-' Published by the Institute for Scientific Information, 

 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 



i" For details of the sample and methodology employed, 

 see JmUcalon of the Quantihi and Quality of the Scu-ntiftc Literature, 

 Computer Horizons, Inc., 1975. (A study commissioned 

 specifically for this report), 



15 An analysis of 2,121 journals included in the Science 

 Citation Inda for 1973 yields similar results in the ranking of 

 nations within fields, but comparable data for the larger set 

 of journals are not available for earlier years. 



the U.S.S.R. led all countries, with the United 

 States following as the second largest 

 producer.!" The overall position of the United 

 States, relative to the other countries, has 

 changed little since 1965, the initial year of this 

 indicator. For the seven fields as a whole, U.S. 

 scientists and engineers published more than did 

 those of any other country, followed by Soviet 

 scientists and engineers. The United Kingdom, 

 in these terms, ranks a distant third, while 

 France, West Germany, and Japan cluster at a 

 somewhat lower level. 



The international position of the United 

 States may be declining in the fields of 

 chemistry, engineering, and physics. The U.S. 

 share of the literature in each of these fields 

 declined slightly in both 1972 and 1973, as 

 shown in figure 1-6. Furthermore, the absolute 

 number of publications in these areas was lower 

 in 1973 than in some previous years.'' (These 

 declines may be related to trends in the funding 

 of research in the three fields, as presented in the 

 "Basic Research" chapter of this report). 



Although attention was focused above on the 

 six countries producing the largest number of 

 scientific publications, several other nations 

 contribute significantly to the world literature. 's 

 The largest contributors among these in 1973 

 were: 



Australia 



Canada 



Czechoslovakia 



India 



Israel 



Italy 



Netherlands 



Poland 



Sweden 



Switzerland 



Each of these countries ranked among the first 

 10 nations in the number of 1973 research 

 publications of at least one of the eight fields of 

 science. 



National research profiles. Countries differ in 

 the emphasis they place on various fields of 

 scientific research. The relative number of 



1^ The Science Cilation Index for 1973 and earlier years did not 

 include a number of important U.S.S.R. chemistry journals; 

 the U.S.S.R. share of the chemistry literatuie, therefore, 

 may be underestimated. 



1- Similar publication trends in these fields, found in 

 another study, are presented in the "Basic Research"chapter 

 of this report 



18 These and all subsequent data on scientific literature 

 were developed from an analysis of 2,121 of the journals in 

 the 1973 Science Citation Index, as described in Indicators of the 

 Quantity and Quality of the Scientific Literature. Computer 

 Horizons, Inc., 1975 (A study commissioned specifically for 

 this report). 



9 



