China and US lead the world on joint research output but that is changing, warns study
- Sino-US co-publications, growing since 2017, saw a slight dip in 2021, report from publishers Elsevier and Pacific Rim universities body says
- Growing bilateral geopolitical tensions in the past five years have come to a head over US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan visit
China and the United States are the largest bilateral research collaborators globally, while each produced around 20 per cent of the world’s scholarly output in the last five years, a study by the world’s No I science publisher and a network of world universities has found.
But such co-publications, which had been “growing gradually” since 2017, saw a slight dip last year, according to the analysis of publications such as articles, books and conference papers, with the report warning of the impact of geopolitical tensions and technical battles between the two rival powers.
“The world cannot afford to divide the world’s two largest producers of published research,” report co-publishers Elsevier and the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU) said in a joint commentary.
Elsevier is the world’s largest scientific literature publisher, and APRU involves a network of 60 universities across the Americas, Asia and Australasia.
“The joint publication of the two countries constitutes the largest bilateral research relationship so far, sharing top research talents from both sides,’ the commentary noted.
“Geopolitical divisions around national interests and technological sovereignty may not disappear any time soon, leading to increased governance or controls related to research collaborations,” it warned.