Top 20 countries in chemistry based on citations per paper

31 July 2008

The data above were extracted from the Essential Science Indicators database of Thomson Reuters. This database, currently covering the period January 1998 to April 2008, surveys only journal articles (original research reports and review articles) indexed by Thomson Reuters. Articles are assigned to a category based on the journals in which they were published and Thomson Reuters’s journal-to-category field definition scheme. Both articles tabulated and citation counts to those articles are for the period indicated. Here our ranking in chemistry is by citations per paper – among nations that published 10,000 or more papers – to reveal weighted impact. For articles with multiple authors from different nations, each nation receives full, not fractional, citation credit. Essential Science Indicators lists nations ranked in the top 50 per cent for a field over a given period, based on total citations. In chemistry (which as here defined excludes dedicated biochemistry journals), 92 nations are listed, meaning 184 were surveyed. Twenty-two nations published at least 10,000 papers during the period. Notable are those that produced relatively few papers but achieved a high citations-per-paper score, namely the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden and Belgium (all in the top ten). For more information on Thomson Reuters’s Essential Science Indicators, see http://scientific.thomson.com/products/esi. Also see: http://scientific.thomson.com