Research is increasingly going global, a new report from Thompson Reuters says. The media and information company examined the science and innovation activity of the G20 member nations.
"The world is no longer bi-partite (Europe and North America) in terms of significant and even top-level science," the report notes. "It is now at least tri-partite (Europe, North America, and Asia) and perhaps more."
Based on an analysis of its Web of Science database, Thompson Reuters finds that most G20 nations have increased their output of scientific papers during the last decade, though some have ramped up their production faster than others, "resulting in shifting world shares."
It points out that the world share for China has increased to 14 percent in 2012 from 5.6 percent in 2003, while the US share dropped from 33 percent to 27.8 percent in the same time frame.
In addition, Thomson Reuters looked at how member nations fared on their Derwent World Patents Index. "The clearest thing to come out of the study," analyst David Pendlebury tells Wired, "is the shrinking in-country share of patents in 2012 despite the rise in overall number of patents. We're seeing that countries are more connected to each other than ever before."