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The Scientific Impact of Developing Nations - PubMed

  • ️Fri Jan 01 2016

The Scientific Impact of Developing Nations

Claudia N Gonzalez-Brambila et al. PLoS One. 2016.

Abstract

This paper analyzes science productivity for nine developing countries. Results show that these nations are reducing their science gap, with R&D investments and scientific impact growing at more than double the rate of the developed world. But this "catching up" hides a very uneven picture among these nations, especially on what they are able to generate in terms of impact and output relative to their levels of investment and available resources. Moreover, unlike what one might expect, it is clear that the size of the nations and the relative scale of their R&D investments are not the key drivers of efficiency.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: Banorte provided support in the form of salaries for author [Reyes-Gonzalez]. This does not alter the authors' adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Input-Output for R&D baseline group vs. developed economies.

Sources: GERD, BERD and the number of full time equivalent (FTE) researchers data were obtained using the OECD Main Science and Technology Indicators (

http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=MSTI_PUB

). The number of publications and citations was obtained using the ISI National Science Indicators (Thomson Reuters, 2011). The GDP was obtained from the World Bank Indicators

www.worldbank.org

. Patents were obtained from WIPO, Industrial Property Statistics—Aggregate Patent Data, (2013).

http://www.wipo.int/ipstats/en/statistics/patents/index.html

.

Fig 2
Fig 2. Input-Output for R&D across the baseline group.

Sources: GERD, BERD and the number of full time equivalent (FTE) researchers data were obtained using the OECD Main Science and Technology Indicators (

http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=MSTI_PUB

). The number of publications and citations was obtained using the ISI National Science Indicators (Thomson Reuters, 2011). The GDP was obtained from the World Bank Indicators

www.worldbank.org

. Patents were obtained from WIPO, Industrial Property Statistics—Aggregate Patent Data, (2013).

http://www.wipo.int/ipstats/en/statistics/patents/index.html

.

Fig 3
Fig 3. Research footprint baseline group vs. developed economies.

Source: Thomson Reuters, Web of Science (Science Citation Index Expanded), compiled by UNESCO, (UNESCO, 2010).

Fig 4
Fig 4. Research footprint for the baseline group.

Source: Thomson Reuters, Web of Science (Science Citation Index Expanded), compiled by UNESCO, (UNESCO, 2010).

Fig 5
Fig 5. Percentage of Publications in International Collaboration.

Source: Thomson Reuters, Web of Science (Science Citation Index Expanded), compiled by UNESCO, (UNESCO, 2010).

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Grants and funding

The authors received no specific funding for this work. Banorte provided support in the form of salaries for author [Reyes-Gonzalez], but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section.

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