Recently, the British science magazine Nature (2065438+March 23, 2007) published a report that worried the Japanese scientific community. In the past ten years, Japan's scientific research has experienced a sharp slowdown and began to lag behind other countries. In this regard, the Japanese media unanimously reported that it was "shocking." But for those concerned, especially those engaged in research work in colleges and universities, this report just confirms everyone's usual worries.

This report, called Nature Index 20 17 Japan, compares the increase and decrease of the number of papers published in Japan and other countries in recent years based on data from several databases. In addition, the report also analyzes the reasons for this situation. As a person engaged in life science research in a national university, while briefly introducing the contents of the report, the author also wants to talk about his work experience and practical feelings in the front line of scientific research.

This report mainly uses "WOS", "Scopus" and "Nature Index" databases. WOS and Scopus show the dynamic changes of data of tens of thousands of scientific journals around the world, while Nature Index shows the dynamic changes of data of 68 top journals in various fields of natural science.

According to the data of WOS and scopes, during the decade from 2005 to 20 15, Japanese papers in almost all fields showed a trend from flat to declining. Some people may think ping is not bad, but it is not. During this period, the number of global papers increased by 80%, while the number of Japanese papers only remained at 14%. On the other hand, the data of Nature Index shows that during the four years from 20 12 to 20 16, the number of Japanese papers decreased by 8.3%, but the number of British papers increased by 17.3% and that of China increased by nearly 50%. In the context of the increasing number of global papers, Japan's ranking is actually declining.