The first index to track output in prestigious medical journals, the Nature Index Annual Tables 2023, shows that the United States dominates international health-sciences publishing.
The nation’s position as the global leader in health sciences production has been solidified by significant government and business investment.
Nature Index Expands Coverage to Health Sciences
In terms of output in the natural sciences, China, its nearest rival, surpassed the United States in 2022.
According to Share, a metric that tracks the percentage of authors from a region or institution on each paper published in a year in the journals tracked by the Nature Index, the Annual Tables rank countries, territories, and institutions.
It is now possible to track publication output across the health sciences and the four existing natural-science categories (physical sciences, chemistry, Earth and environmental sciences, and biological sciences, formerly known as life sciences) thanks to the inclusion of 64 medical journals in this year’s tables, which adds 9,200 articles to the database for 2022.
The US Share was 5,352 in this inaugural ranking of countries by production in the health sciences, much above China’s 1,287 and the UK’s 963 (see Leagues apart).
China has a share of 19,373 in the natural sciences, while the United States is second with 17,610.
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US National Institutes of Health Leads the Way
According to Carol Robbins, a senior resources analyst at the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics of the US National Science Foundation in Alexandria, Virginia, health-science research is a significant area of federal funding in the US.
According to her, federal financing for research and development in the field of health is virtually as high as that for research and development in the field of defense.
Approximately US$42 billion was spent in health and medical research by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) alone in 2022, and it is anticipated that this amount will rise to $51.1 billion in 2024.
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