Countries by Scientific and technical journal articles

Ranking 2022

Analysis

This metric counts peer-reviewed scientific and technical journal articles by country. According to the source definition, article counts refer to publications from a selection of conference proceedings and peer-reviewed journals from Scopus in science and engineering fields, according to the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics Taxonomy of Disciplines. The unit is an absolute count of articles. Data covers 197 countries for the year 2022, with 100% of datapoints classified as official quality and 100% sourced from the most recent seven-year window. The metric identified 22 extreme outliers using a 3-standard-deviation threshold, reflecting high variance across the dataset.

The top of the ranking is dominated by large, high-income economies and populous emerging powers. China (rank 1, 898,949) and the United States (rank 2, 457,335) are separated from the rest of the field by a wide margin. India sits third at 207,390, followed by Germany (rank 4, 113,976) and the United Kingdom (rank 5, 105,584). Japan (rank 6, 103,723) and Italy (rank 7, 90,586) round out the top tier. All top-10 countries exceed 69,000 articles, with the Russian Federation at rank 8 (84,252) and South Korea at rank 9 (76,936) also featuring prominently. High absolute totals reflect large research workforces and substantial national scientific infrastructure, as visible in the data.

Several middle-ranking positions show notable patterns. Iran (rank 15, 60,940) places above several Western European nations, including the Netherlands (rank 18, 34,311) and Switzerland (rank 22, 24,248). Indonesia (rank 19, 31,947) and Malaysia (rank 20, 26,506) outrank Switzerland and Sweden (rank 25, 22,354). Iraq (rank 37, 13,408) places ahead of Singapore (rank 39, 12,700) and Finland (rank 40, 12,013). At the lower end, Chad and Guyana share rank 163 with identical values of 28.87 articles each. Small island states dominate the bottom ranks, with Tuvalu (rank 196, 0.52) and Nauru (rank 197, 0.27) recording the lowest totals.

This metric counts only articles indexed in Scopus in science and engineering fields, so publications in humanities, social sciences, and arts are excluded. Country attribution in Scopus is based on author affiliations, which can result in articles being credited to multiple countries or to countries where researchers are affiliated but not permanently based. Absolute counts favor large countries with large populations and research workforces over smaller, potentially more research-intensive nations on a per-capita basis. Fractional counts in the data (such as 898,949.09) suggest articles co-authored across borders are apportioned rather than counted whole, which may affect comparability. The 22 extreme outliers identified in the viability check indicate that a small number of countries drive the global distribution significantly.

Methodology

Data is drawn from the World Bank World Development Indicators, indicator code IP.JRN.ARTC.SC, for the reference year 2022. Article counts refer to publications from a selection of conference proceedings and peer-reviewed journals from Scopus in science and engineering fields, according to the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics Taxonomy of Disciplines. The dataset covers 197 countries, all with data from within the last seven years, and 100% of datapoints are classified as official quality. The ranking uses absolute article counts, where higher values indicate greater output. The dataset shows high variance, with values ranging from 0.27 (Nauru) to 898,949.09 (China), a spread of over 332 million percent. Viability checks identified 22 extreme outliers at the 3-standard-deviation threshold. Average year-over-year change across the dataset is 21.4%, within the 50% volatility threshold. Fractional values indicate that co-authored articles spanning multiple country affiliations are apportioned across countries rather than counted in full for each.

Sources

• World Bank