A survey by the National Institute of Science and Technology Policy, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology found that the total number of papers and the number of high-profile papers in Japan are still on the decline.Especially in the fields of physics, materials science, and chemistry, this tendency is remarkable, and it is a reflection of the current situation in Japan, where it has been pointed out that research capabilities are declining.
The survey is based on the natural science papers included in the "Web of Science" of Claribate Analytics, a global information service company. If one paper is written in multiple countries, one paper will be published in each country. We analyzed by the integer counting method, which counts each paper, and the fractional counting method, which calculates one paper by dividing it by the number of countries.
According to it, when calculated by the integer counting method, the total number of papers in Japan from 2015 to 2017 is the 5th in the world, the number of papers cited is in the top 10%, the number of papers is 11th, and the number of citations is in the top 1%. The number of papers was 12th.
On the other hand, in terms of the fractional counting method, the total number of papers in Japan is 4th in the world, the number of papers with the top 10% citations, and the number of papers with the top 1% citations are both 9th.The mass of published papers has been on a downward trend since the beginning of the 2000s.Papers with the top 10% and top 1% of citations, which are particularly noteworthy, have a strong tendency to do so, and are far behind not only the top US but also China, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France.
While the number of published papers continues to increase worldwide, only Japan is on the decline in major countries.For the past 30 years, the Japanese economy has been losing one person in the world, and its international status has plummeted, but the same tendency can be seen in the world of academic papers.
