Scientific research in countries around the world is vital in making key progression in medicine, technology and almost every other area of our lives.
There’s no single measure that can capture global scientific progress, but by evaluating R&D spending and patents, and looking at the number of researchers and academic papers a country has, we can see the leading indicators of a nation’s commitment to be at the forefront of scientific discovery.
RS Components have analysed each country across four different metrics: number of patents, number of scientific research papers released, percentage of GDP spend on research and development, and number of researchers per 1,000 people. Each country was then allocated a score based on their figures for each metric with their overall score determining their final rank within the index. You can view the full findings here.
The US has been revealed to be leading the way in innovation and science, followed by Israel and South Korea – despite European countries largely dominating the top ten otherwise.
Global leaders China and the UK are ranked surprisingly low on the index – in 20th and 15th places respectively. Previous reports have deemed China as the country set to become a global science leader by 2025, as a result of its huge population and increase in students studying STEM and consequent rising number of Chinese scientists and engineers. However, the analysis revealed that despite this, the country only has 2 scientific researchers per 1,000 employed, ranking in as one of the lowest countries for number of researchers.
With over 7,200 research papers, the UK actually ranks in fourth place of all the countries, behind the US, China and Germany, for overall number of research papers. However, compared to the USA’s 155,982, the UK has a significantly small number of scientific patents, with only 7,167, and also spends 1.67% of its GDP on research and development, compared to 2.74% in the USA, 4.25% in Israel, and 4.23% in South Korea.
This is likely what brings the UK’s score down to 15th place overall, despite being a global leader in science and innovation. A range of disciplines are covered within the UK scientific research from natural and medical sciences, to humanities and social sciences, to engineering. The standard of excellence in UK research is represented by a group of highly prestigious academies.
A spokesperson from RS Components comments:
‘Science is continuing to adapt and progress globally, with no denying the groundbreaking solutions it has created and continues to make to help combat a breadth of issues, from epidemic diseases to the everyday cold.
The United States of America comes out as a clear winner in scientific discovery with 9 in 1,000 people working in some form of scientific progress. What we found particularly interesting was the United Kingdom’s ranking in 15th place throughout the world for scientific discoveries – showing that as much as we, as a nation, have a considerably high amount of researchers, we lack the number of patents that are registered.
Science is constantly adapting and aiming to help cure and combat diseases worldwide and it is clear to see that as a human race we prioritise its success and funding.’
Is your country a science capital of the world? Use the interactive tool to see how your country stacks up against some of the global superpowers.
