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The world’s most prosperous economies are also the most innovative #G20

The First Annual G20 Data Scorecard Report Highlights the Research Performance of the World’s Leading Economies  

The Institute for Scientific Information at the Web of Science Group today launched a new report which examines the research performance of the G20 with a visual comparative snapshot for each G20 nation, ahead of the Osaka summit in Japan from 28-29 June.  

The Web of Science Group is part of Clarivate Analytics plc, a global leader in providing trusted insights and analytics to accelerate the pace of innovation.

The world’s most prosperous economies are also among the most innovative and innovation is driven first and foremost by research. Research boosts economic growth and drives progress as the benefits of research are realized through economic, social and cultural outcomes. 

The report, The Annual G20 Scorecard – Research Performance 2019 includes both a written summary and a host of graphs and exhibits that highlight the research performance of Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, United Kingdom and the United States.

It shows that collectively the 19 countries of the G20:

  • Represent 65% of the world’s population
  • Produce >80% of global GDP
  • Spend 92% of global R&D
  • Employ 87% of the world’s researchers
  • Publish 70% of the global research papers indexed in the Web of Science with more than five million articles and reviews indexed for the last three years

The profiles within the report are selective, highlighting chosen topics of current policy interest that identify good signals of the health of the research base.

Key factors that contribute to impactful research are laid out for each nation in the report and cover:

  • International engagement: collaboration between countries accounts for about half of G20 output and produces some of the most impactful research
  • Relative research funding within the wider economy: the EU aims to fund research at a minimum of 3% GDP by 2020
  • Gender balance in the research workforce: UNESCO reports that globally 30% of researchers are female
  • Open access to research: the EU is driving Plan S to make all publicly-funded research publications immediately accessible and one-third of G20 output in 2018 was published in an OA format
  • A summary of publication output and citation impact along with a deconstruction of these indicators by main research areas in sciences and humanities

Jonathan Adams, Director at the Institute for Scientific Information and a co-author of this inaugural annual report said:

“These scorecards cover both large, mature economies and economies that are smaller or still building their research base. We highlight the progress of their development – there is no ranking of the countries profiled here, because that would not be meaningful. This is not a report on comparative performance. These scorecards will help policy-makers, observers and reporters to track, applaud and critique the research progress of the G20 member nations.”


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