Papers produced by international collaborations tend to be more highly cited than domestic studies.Credit: Shelby Tauber/Bloomberg/Getty China is redrawing the global science map, according to an analysis of citation data by the analytics firm Clarivate. The country is increasing research collaborations with European partners, even as it expands into emerging areas from southeast Asia to the Middle East and Africa. The United States, meanwhile, is losing its long-held lead as a research powerhouse and collaborator in world science.
The analysis, which is based on a quarter of a century of citation data from the Web of Science, also warns of the looming consequences of policies instituted by the administration of US President Donald Trump. Among other actions, it has cut grant funding, sought to restrict the number of foreign students and undermined research in crucial areas such as vaccines and climate change.
“We have expected throughout our lifetimes to see the US leading everything, and it isn’t any more,” says Jonathan Adams, chief scientist at Clarivate’s Institute of Scientific Information in London. “From the point of view of wealth creation and quality of life in the US, that’s a significant concern.”
Peaks and troughs
Broadly speaking, international research collaborations continue to rise globally, and Adams says that’s a good thing: the highest-impact research, at least in terms of citations, tends to flow from multilateral research partnerships. The United States and China remain dominant forces, but the balance of power is shifting.
China–US research collaborations are in decline — this is bad news for everyone
Despite a brief dip during the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinese collaborations with international partners across the globe, and in Europe in particular, have continued to rise. On the domestic front, China’s research output has more than doubled over the past decade: it surpassed the United States as the largest producer of research papers in 2020 and is now poised to take the lead in terms of citations.
By contrast, the United States has struggled to maintain both the quantity and the quality of its science. US research output has yet to recover from a widespread pandemic dip, but the analysis suggests that its troubles began earlier. The country’s citation impact for domestic research has been going down steadily for decades as other nations have upped their game, but Adams says the rate of decline has accelerated since around 2018.