What's New in Research: April 21, 2003
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Science in the United States, 1998-2002

The United States of America's world share of science and social-science papers over the last five years, expressed as a percentage of papers in each of 23 fields in the ISI database. Also, the USA's relative citation impact compared to the world average in each field, in percentage terms.

Between 1998 and 2002, Thomson ISI indexed 1,229,994 papers that listed at least one author address in the United States of America. Of those papers, the highest percentage appeared in journals classified under the heading of law, followed by education and social sciences. As the right-hand column shows, the citations-per-paper average for US law papers was 10% above the world average in the field (2.67 cites per paper for the USA versus the world mark of 2.42 cites), while US education papers scored just 9% above the world average. Thus, the two ISI-indexed fields most populated by US papers are also the fields in which US impact compares least favorably with the respective world averages. The story is reversed in the fields at the bottom of the list, where US representation is smaller but comparative impact is strongest. This is particularly true in physics (US impact 59% above the world average) and chemistry (53% above).

in-cites - an editorial component of ISI Essential Science Indicators from ISI^®
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