Authoritative statistics released Monday show that China continues to be ranked eighth in the world for publication of papers receiving international scientific and technological citation.
The figures show that Chinese researchers published 49,678 papers in international journals in 2000, representing an annual increase of 7.6 percent.
The statistical work organized by the China Scientific and Technological Information Institute, affiliated to the Ministry of Science and Technology, was based on the three foremost American scientific reference books, the Scientific Citation Index (SCI), the Engineering Index (EI) and the Index of the Scientific and Technological Papers (ISTP), as well as the domestic China Scientific and Technological Papers Citation (CSTPC).
In accordance with the total number of the scientific and technological papers published in 2000, China follows the United States, Japan, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Canada.
The SCI listed 30,499 papers written by Chinese researchers, increasing by 6,023 or 19.7 percent. China, for the first time, exceeded Russia and Spain and is ranked eighth in the category.
The EI listed 13,163 papers in this category, with a decrease of 1,644. As the total number of the papers listed in the index decreased, China remains third in rank, following up the United States and Japan.
The ISTP listed 6,016 Chinese papers, with a drop of 889. China is still ranked eighth in the field.
A total of 15,733 papers written by Chinese were cited in 2000, with an annual increase of 20.8 percent from 13,024 in the previous year. There were altogether 31,354 citations for Chinese papers, with an annual increase of 24.6 percent.
Among all the SCI papers, 7,038 were cooperative efforts between Chinese and overseas researchers, accounting for 23.1 percent of the total number.
According to the CSTPC, Chinese researchers published 180,848 papers in domestic scientific journals, with a yearly increase of 11.1 percent. Overseas researchers published 877 papers in journals in China, an increase of 17.6 percent.
(China Daily December 4, 2001)
