Global scientific production in the pre-Covid-19 Era: An analysis of 53 countries for 22 years

Abstract

Based on an extensive analysis of public databases, we provide an overview of the global scientific output and describe the dynamics of the profound changes in the scientific enterprise during the last decades. The analysis included the scientific production of 53 countries over the 1996-2018 period. During this period, the production of articles per year has tripled. There was a strong correlation between the growth of the global gross domestic product and the increase in the number of articles (R² = 0.973, P<0.001). Six countries showed a robust increment of their scientific production and are currently among the top 20 in the ranking of world scientific production (China, India, South Korea, Brazil, Turkey, and Iran). The mean annual growth rate was about 12.7% for these six countries. The share of the global scientific production of these countries increased from 7% in 1996 to 27.8% in 2018. Conversely, the participation of the 10 most traditional countries has dropped from 73% to 45% during the same period. In conclusion, we believe that our findings may contribute to further studies aiming to evaluate the impact and changes of the scientific endeavor over the next years in light of the forthcoming new world framework.

Key words
research evaluation; scientific production; science policy; bibliometric indicators