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Citations in science are biased towards a handful of nations – and the gap is growing

31 May 2022
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Unequal reach A study has found that researchers in a small group of highly active countries are more likely to be cited than their global peers. (Courtesy: iStock/Nednapa)

Scientists from a handful of “core” countries – including China, the US and the UK – tend to be cited much more than those working in “periphery” nations. That’s the conclusion of an analysis by sociologists in the US, who find that this citation gap is largest in the physical sciences – and that it is growing across all scientific fields. This inequality and lack of diversity in geographical spread of science could impact the spread of knowledge and the growth of new ideas, the researchers warn.

The study has been conducted by a team led by Charles Gomez from the City University of New York, who examined around 20 million academic papers across nearly 150 fields published between 1980 and 2012. They analysed the article’s text and citations to see how the number of references a paper receives deviates from what would be expected based on comparisons with other academic publications on similar topics. Known as “citational lensing”, this approach reveals how citations vary between authors in different countries and over time.

The team found that researchers in a small group of highly active countries – which includes Australia, China, Germany, Japan, the UK and the US – are more likely to be cited than scientists in other nations around the world. These “over-cited” scientists end up receiving more citations than academics in other countries who work on similar topics. This citation gap is biggest in the physical and mathematical sciences, followed by engineering and computational sciences.

Some of the greatest breakthroughs have happened by accident, so it is dangerous to potentially be excluding other voices

Charles Gomez

The results show that over the 30 years examined, academics in the core nations became more and more over-cited, while researchers in periphery countries – such as Brazil, Mexico and Turkey – are increasingly cited less than would be expected. Gomez told Physics World that the citation gap is “growing quite rapidly” and adds that much of the citation bias is occurring because scientists within the core countries over-recognize each other. He describes this as being similar to a “rich get richer” effect, explaining that once you are at the top the inequality grows.

Growth of China

The other major trend uncovered in the study is the rise of China as a research superpower. In the 1980s and 1990s China was an under-cited country but by the 2000s its academics were more likely to be cited than those from other countries. This was particularly the case in physics and mathematics as well as in engineering and computational sciences, with citations in these fields from China overtaking western European countries.

In other fields, scientists in China have caught up with their contemporaries in the core countries, though over the period studied, the US still dominates across all scientific fields. “It is important that global science is equitable and inclusive,” says Gomez, who adds that this is not just because science should be welcoming, but also because science works by serendipity. “Some of the greatest breakthroughs have happened by accident, so it is dangerous to potentially be excluding other voices,” he explains. “It is detrimental to science’s own progress.”

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