The motivation for this question is attempting to quantify the quality of science in a country. Getting at quality is difficult, but the number of citations is one way of trying to do so. Is there any available resource that has computed the number of citations per scientist in various countries?
-
Somewhat related to the statement "To get at quality is very difficult but the number of citations is one way.": Why is it said that judging a paper by citation count is a bad idea?– O. R. MapperCommented Aug 10, 2015 at 19:08
-
I see only statements. What is the question?– Maarten BuisCommented Aug 10, 2015 at 19:37
-
3@MaartenBuis: See the title: evidently the question is where you can find data on number of citations per scientist by country.– Nate EldredgeCommented Aug 10, 2015 at 19:43
-
Indeed: the question is where you can find data on number of citations per scientist by country - Wim Hol– Wim HolCommented Aug 10, 2015 at 23:01
-
I would be surprised if anyone has collected that info. I think you'll need to do a literature search for a past study, or conduct your own study....– keshlamCommented Aug 11, 2015 at 2:25
|
Show 2 more comments
1 Answer
There is a data set downloadable from SCImago. They used citation data from Scopus. Here is the ranking of the 50 countries with the most citations according to them (full list downloadable from their website; data are between 1996 and 2014).
# Country Citations
--------------------------
1 United States 177434935
2 United Kingdom 44011201
3 Germany 35721869
4 Japan 27040067
5 France 24700140
6 Canada 22152666
7 China 19110353
8 Italy 18019464
9 Netherlands 14278721
10 Australia 13772961
11 Spain 12628097
12 Switzerland 10872269
13 Sweden 9417604
14 South Korea 7063429
15 India 6989150
16 Belgium 6691791
17 Denmark 5494671
18 Israel 5079652
19 Brazil 5036027
20 Taiwan 4790230
21 Austria 4334382
22 Finland 4295721
23 Russian Fed. 4289618
24 Poland 3491958
25 Norway 3354827
26 Hong Kong 2951215
27 Turkey 2938841
28 Greece 2702414
29 Singapore 2561645
30 New Zealand 2495935
31 Portugal 2096242
32 Ireland 1999703
33 Mexico 1962572
34 Czech Republic 1867611
35 South Africa 1774278
36 Argentina 1681700
37 Hungary 1660840
38 Iran 1504541
39 Chile 1014687
40 Thailand 976328
41 Egypt 818728
42 Malaysia 670387
43 Ukraine 635570
44 Romania 619956
45 Slovenia 611672
46 Slovakia 561511
47 Saudi Arabia 547167
48 Croatia 459356
49 Bulgaria 455406
50 Pakistan 425467
Now it's unclear from the website how exactly they attribute a paper to a country when there are authors from multiple countries. Note also that, obviously, countries with many papers have many citations. It's fun to re-order the above list on the basis of citations by published paper:
# Country Citations per document
-------------------------------------------
1 Switzerland 26.1
2 Denmark 24.94
3 Netherlands 24.56
4 United States 23.36
5 Sweden 23.21
6 Canada 21.4
7 Finland 21.2
8 United Kingdom 21.03
9 Belgium 21.01
10 Israel 20.56
11 Norway 20.17
12 Australia 19.49
13 Austria 19.24
14 Ireland 19.01
15 New Zealand 18.52
answered Aug 11, 2015 at 6:44
-
Thank you - this is very useful. And fun also. Yes, how to count citations of papers with e.g. 200 authors from 20 different countries is an art by itself. But to arrive at the number of citations PER SCIENTIST by country we still need the number of scientists by country. Any idea where to find those numbers?– Wim HolCommented Aug 11, 2015 at 16:04