Research and analysis

International comparison of the UK research base, 2025

Published 5 June 2025

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1. Executive summary

The report uses research output bibliometric data to evaluate the performance of the UK’s research base in an international setting, giving an overview of the long-term trends (1996 to 2022) and focusing on the UK’s performance more recently (2018 to 2022)[footnote 1] 

The UK’s performance is compared against that of the other G7 countries: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States, as well as Brazil, China, India, Russia, and South Korea. 

This report is an update on the edition published in 2022 and the latest in a series of publications assessing the UK’s research performance[footnote 2], to enable continued monitoring of the UK’s research performance.

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1.1 Key Findings

While the UK has shown a positive trend in publication counts, citation counts, and highly-cited publication counts, its relative share has declined in recent years due to faster growth in other countries. In contrast, the UK has maintained its position on field-weighted citation impact (FWCI)[footnote 3], having the highest FWCI among comparator countries. 

The UK’s scholarly output is relatively well-rounded across different fields, but with some variation between subject areas. From selected subject areas[footnote 4] it has a higher-than-average[footnote 5] publication share in Humanities, Social Sciences and Medical Sciences and slightly lower than average publication shares in Engineering and Technologies, Agricultural Sciences, and Natural Sciences. 

The UK’s research base has a very high level of international collaboration. Just over 60% of the UK’s publications in 2022 were co-authored with at least one non-UK researcher, currently the highest amongst the comparators.

1.2 Highlights: Research Output

UK Publication share

6.0% of the World total in 2022

  • Share decreased at -3.9% per annum in the period 2018 to 2022
  • Ranks 4th among comparator countries in 2022

UK Citation share

8.8% of the World total in 2022

  • Share decreased at -4.6% per annum in the period 2018 to 2022
  • Ranks 3rd among comparator countries in 2022

UK Field-Weighted Citation Impact

Field-Weighted citation impact compares how a number of citations for a given set of publications compares to the average number of citations received by all world publications in the same field (for a full definition of FWCI, see Appendix)

1.54 in 2022

  • Increased at 0.5% per annum in the period 2018 to 2022
  • Ranks 1st among comparator countries in 2022

UK Highly-Cited Publication Share

12.0% of the World total in 2022

  • Share decreased at -4.7% per annum in the period 2018 to 2022
  • Ranks 3rd among comparator countries in 2022

The UK has seen a decline in recent growth across all measured research output indicators.

Both the quantity and impact (in terms of citations) of the UK’s research output place it towards the top of many rankings. However, growth of other countries in both publication volume and citation performance (FWCI), notably China and India, has led to decreasing shares of the world outputs for traditionally research-intensive nations (including the US and Germany).

Even though across the last 5 years the UK’s scholarly output, overall, is showing an upwards trend, the growth is not as fast as some other nations, resulting in a slightly decreasing share of total world publications for the UK.

The UK’s ranking in citation impact has remained the same over the past 5 years across the comparator countries, with average FWCI very slightly rising.

1.3 Highlights: Collaboration

UK International Collaboration

60.4% of UK articles in 2022 result from international collaboration

  • Share increased at 3.9% per annum in the period 2018 to 2022
  • Ranks 1st for share of international collaboration amongst comparator countries in 2022

International partnerships in research and innovation can be seen to be reflective of levels of international collaboration in a country. We measure international partnerships, here, using international co-authorships in scholarly output.

After experiencing sustained growth in international co-authorship in the last five years, just over 60% of the UK’s publications in 2022 are co-authored with at least one non-UK researcher, currently the highest amongst comparator countries.

1.4 Main statistical changes since the last publication[footnote 6] 

In 2022, the UK declined one ranking place in world publication share, with India for the first time having a larger research output. However, the UK still remains 3rd across selected comparator countries in share of world citations, share of highly-cited publications and 1st in FWCI[footnote 7]. 

China’s share in world publications, world citations, and world highly-cited publications continues to rise, with the US declining and the majority of other comparator countries remaining relatively consistent year-on-year. 

The majority of compared countries, including the UK and China, have shown relatively stable FWCI in recent years. This contrasts with China’s historical upward trends. The US, Germany, and Russia have shown declining FWCI. 

For compared countries, annual shares of internationally co-authored publications has overall increased for the period 2018 to 2022. The only exception is China, whose share of internationally co-authored publications declined each year during this period.

2. Introduction

This note summarises key findings from the latest ‘International comparison of the UK research base’ statistical release and is an update of the 2022 version[footnote 8]. The report evaluates the UK’s research performance in an international setting, by comparing different aspects of scholarly outputs across a selection of comparators. 

Comparator countries for this release include, all of the G7 countries: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (US); and five other major economies: Brazil, China, India, Russia, and South Korea. The EU27[footnote 9], the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and global average values (“World”) are included as benchmarks. There has been a dramatic shift in the research production of emerging countries in the last decade[footnote 10] and as they shape world trends together with the traditional research centric countries, they were included in the comparison. While this group of twelve countries is by no means comprehensive, together with the benchmarks, it does enable identification of key global trends. Previous releases employ the same selection of countries which, in addition, enables continued monitoring of scholarly performance.

2.1 Sources and methodology

All uses of these bibliometric statistics must carry the following source note referencing the data supplier:  

SciVal® database, Elsevier B.V., http://www.scival.com (downloaded on 28/11/2024)

Please note: The underlying SciVal bibliometric data for Figure 5 and Table 5 was downloaded on 05/02/2025, at a different time than the rest of the underlying data. As a result, the output may vary slightly.

This report uses bibliometric data from SciVal, which is a data portal for Scopus (an abstract and citation database licensed by Elsevier[footnote 11] see Appendix 1). Scopus data has been used for DSIT and formerly BEIS performance releases since 2011 and covers multi-lingual and global peer-reviewed literature, published journals, book series and conference proceedings[footnote 12] among other features of research performance. 

The Scopus database is live and updated monthly. Certain indicators including publication count, and especially those linked to citations, may therefore retrospectively change and the values within this release may differ to values published in any past and future releases[footnote 13]. 

Assessment and comparison of research performance is carried out using a range of bibliometric indicators: share of total world publications, share of total world citations, share of total world highly-cited publications, field-weighted citation impact and indicators of collaboration, with focus on international collaboration. Detailed description of the indicators can be found in the Appendix.

Period studied in this report

This report provides an overview of long-term trends (1996 to 2022) and a more focused view of performance and comparison of the UK and comparator countries more recently, in the period 2018 to 2022 (full calendar years). The years refer to the year of publication, and while 2023 is the last year of complete data, 2022 is used due to a lag in citation data caused by the average time for citations on a given publication to reach maturity.

Bibliometric indicators and their limitations

This report uses the following types of indicators:

Numbers and shares of publications

Publication volumes, and by extension shares of total publications, provide an indication of the scale of output of the research bases in different countries and different subject areas. In this report, it is used to compare the sizes of research bases of comparators and specifically, to understand the UK’s relative position in terms of its research base size.  

However, there are several things to consider when using this indicator. Volume of research may not necessarily be associated with quality of research. Moreover, different countries and areas may have different propensities to publish their findings. Finally, the source data has high, but not 100%, coverage of publications worldwide, and there may be some bias toward English-language publications[footnote 14].

Citation indicators

When a publication is cited in another publication, it is an indicator that it is having an impact – the greater the number of citations, all else equal, the greater that impact might be expected to be. Citation indicators, including those used here – share of citations, share of most highly-cited publications, and field-weighted citation impact – are therefore commonly used as a proxy for the academic impact of publications.

However, citations will not always be an indicator of quality. For example, a publication could be cited a lot because a paucity of other sources – indicating impact perhaps but not necessarily quality – or even because it is being cited as being flawed.  

Collaboration indicators  

International collaboration is indicated by the presence of international co-authors in a publication. It reflects levels of international partnerships in research and innovation.  

In the data used for this report, however, international authorship is according to the location of the institution listed by the authors as their affiliation. The nationality of authors is unknown. So, some types of international collaboration will be missed – such as researchers from different countries currently working for institutions in the same country; and some included where the collaboration could be between authors of the same nationality, currently working in institutions in different countries.  

Definitions of the indicators used can be found in the Appendix.

Measuring change

Standard methods of measuring change over time are used throughout this report: Percentage change and Compound annual growth rate (CAGR).  

Percentage change shows the overall change in value at the end of the period relative to the start date.  

CAGR is defined as the constant year-on-year rate of change over a specified period of time. Starting with the earliest value in 2018, the CAGR shows what constant yearly change of a statistic (e.g. number of publications) would have resulted in the value observed in 2022. In this report the CAGR gives an indication of the most recent 5-year time trend for each performance measure.

Subject area definitions

To analyse performance of the UK and comparators in different subject fields, Fields of Research and Development (FORD) classification is used. This classification is used in the Frascati Manual of the OECD[footnote 15].

3. Research outputs

3.1 Key Findings

World publication shares

UK researchers published 246,612 articles in 2022, corresponding to a 1.2% per annum growth on the 235,224 publications published in 2018, growing each year apart from a small drop between 2021 and 2022. This annual growth results in an overall increase of 4.8% in the 5 years from 2018 to 2022.

Figure 1 and Figure 2 both illustrate the growth in the total number of publications over time for all the countries compared between 1996 and 2022, using Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR). CAGR can be derived from the underlying data—see Annex 5.1 for details on the methodology. For the UK, the CAGR in the number of publications during the period 2018 to 2022 (1.2%) is lower than the world average (5.3%), but faster than some other research-intensive countries, such as France (0.5%) and the United States (0.1%). Countries with significant CAGR in the 2018 to 2022 period include China (14.4%), India (12.2%) and Russia (2.2%), indicating that the UK, as well as other research-intensive nations, are seeing a decline in their global shares of publications (Figure 3 & Figure 4).

As shown in Figure 3, the UK has fallen one ranking place in world publication shares, trading places with India who had a larger publication share for the first time in 2022. In 2020, China (813,847 publications) also overtook US (753,195 publications) and became top ranked publications producer and share-holder. China accounted for 25.4% of world publications, while the US, UK and India produced 18.2%, 6.0% and 6.9% in 2022, respectively.

Figure 4 better shows the recent faster growth of India’s total publications relative to other countries (12.2% per annum and 58.3% overall, for the period 2018 to 2022). In 2018, India had a 5.4% share of total world publications.

Figure 1 - Total publications, UK and comparator countries, 1996 to 2022. (Base: all world SCOPUS recorded scholarly output published between the 1996 and 2022 calendar years)

Figure 1 shows a line graph of total publications per year between countries. The USA and China have most publications per year, with China exceeding the USA from 2019.

Figure 2 - Total publications, UK and comparator countries, excluding US and China, 1996 to 2022. (Base: All world SCOPUS recorded scholarly output published 1996-2022)

Figure 2 shows a line graph of total publications per year between countries. Same data as Figure 1, with the USA and China removed to aid comparison of other countries.

Figure 3 - Share of world publications, UK and comparator countries, 1996 to 2022. (Base: All world SCOPUS recorded scholarly output published 1996-2022)

Figure 3 shows a line graph comparing the share of world publications between countries over time. The USA and China have the highest share, with China exceeding the USA from 2020.

Figure 4 provides a more detailed insight in world publication shares, over the same time period, by highlighting the lower part of Figure 3 only. To produce this the y-axis has been truncated to between 0% and 9% and the US and China have been removed.

Figure 4 (Lower section of Figure 3) - Share of world publications, UK and comparator countries, excluding US and China, 1996 to 2022. (Base: All world SCOPUS recorded scholarly output published 1996-2022)

Figure 4 shows a line graph comparing the share of world publications between countries over time. Same data as Figure 3, with the USA and China removed to aid comparison of other countries.

Table 1 - Shares of world publications, values and ranking, UK, EU27, OECD and World, for 2018 and 2022.
Entity 2018 Share (%) 2022 Share (%) Percentage Change CAGR[footnote 16] UK share rank 2018 UK share rank 2022
United Kingdom    7.0 6.0 -14.7% -3.9% - -
EU27 24.6 22.8 -7.5% -1.9% 1[footnote 17] 1[footnote 17]
OECD 61.4 54.0 -12.0% -3.2% 2 2
World 100.0 100.0 - - 3 4

Table 1 shows that, despite its slowly falling share of world publications, the UK has maintained its high ranking above EU countries, second in the OECD. The UK falls one place in the world ranking, as India moves into third.

Activity Index and Subject Area analysis

The relative importance of a subject/discipline in a country’s research performance is given by the share of that subject/discipline in that country’s total. The Activity Index[footnote 18], for a given subject area for a given country, is defined as the ratio of the country’s subject share of all country publications to the World’s subject share of all world publications. For example, in 2022, 38% (nearest whole number) of the UK’s scholarly output was in Medical Sciences, while globally Medical Sciences represented 34% (nearest whole number) of total world publications. Therefore, the Activity Index[footnote 19] for the UK in Medical Sciences for 2022 was 38%/34% = 1.14 (2 d.p.).

The Activity Index is a means of showing the relative importance of different subjects within a country with respect to the world: a value of 1 indicates that the country’s share of the subject or discipline is the same as the world’s, a value higher than 1 implies the country’s share is higher than the world and lower than 1 suggests a lower share than the world.

Caveat: It is important to note that the FORD (Field of Research and Development) categories are not mutually exclusive. A single publication can be assigned to multiple FORD categories. 

As shown in the radar charts in Figure 5, for the UK, half of the 6 subject areas show an Activity Index of greater than 1, with the remaining half below but close to 1. Engineering and Technologies has the lowest Activity Index with Agricultural Sciences and Natural Sciences also below 1. In terms of changes for the UK over time across the 12 years for the 6 subject areas:

  1. Humanities’ Activity Index grew between 2014 and 2018 from 1.55 to 1.65, but has since stayed relatively similar at 1.62 in 2022.
  2. The UK’s Activity Index in Social Sciences has gradually declined over the measured period, at 1.59 in 2014, 1.56 in 2018, and 1.47 in 2022.
  3. Medical Sciences has seen incremental increases at 1.11 in 2014, 1.12 in 2018, and 1.14 in 2022.
  4. Natural Sciences has stayed relatively similar. In 2014 the Activity Index was 0.86, then 0.80 in 2018 and 0.81 in 2022.
  5. The Activity Index in Agricultural Sciences fell between 2014 and 2018 from 0.79 to 0.75, and was at 0.69 in 2022.
  6. The UK’s Activity Index in Engineering and Technologies has increased slightly over the 12 years, from 0.61 in 2014, to 0.63 in 2018 and 0.65 in 2022.

Other research-intensive countries show a similar makeup to the UK in Activity Index, with a relatively even spread across all 6 chosen subject areas. Emerging, fast-growing countries show more uneven makeups, with large spikes in activity on certain subject areas. For example, China has a noticeable focus in Engineering and Technologies, although this has been declining slightly since 2014, with an Activity Index of 1.78 in 2014 and 1.45 in 2022. China’s Activity Index in Humanities and Social Sciences is significantly lower than 1, with Activity Indexes of 0.15 and 0.47, respectively in 2022. 

Brazil has a similarly uneven radar chart, focusing on Agricultural Sciences, although Brazil’s relative activity in other subject areas is not as low, with the lowest Activity Index in 2022 of 0.65 in Engineering and Technologies. 

Russia shows significant growth in Activity Index scores between 2014 and 2022 in Humanities (from 0.55 in 2014 to 1.34 in 2022), Social Sciences (from 0.46 in 2014 to 0.85 in 2022), and Medical Sciences (from 0.39 in 2014 to 0.64 in 2022).

Figure 5 - Activity Index, UK and comparators, across six research areas: Humanities; Social Sciences; Medical Sciences; Natural Sciences; Agricultural Sciences; and Engineering and Technologies, for 2014, 2018 and 2022. (Base: All world SCOPUS recorded scholarly output published 1996-2022)

Figure 5 is a set of graphs showing the relative activity of selected countries between research areas.

Citation shares

Citation count - the number of citations received by a publication from research outputs published after it - is an indicator of the documented impact of a research publication. While citation share refers to the proportion of total citations worldwide that are attributed to an individual entity/country. The UK has maintained its third place in the world share of citations, despite a recent gradual decline in total citations across the world.

Figure 6 shows cross-country comparisons of the share in world citations and highlights the fall in world citation shares for the US and continued rise for China. In 2022 China has a 35.7% share of world citations, compared to the US’ 22.4%, overtaking in 2020. Looking further down, Germany while 4th in total citation shares is now in 5th, overtaken by India in 2022. Figure 7 shows similar comparisons, but excludes the two higher-performing countries on this measure, China and the US.

Figure 6 and Figure 7 corroborate the finding that citation shares often follow publication shares with some lag if the publication trend is sustained, as it takes roughly three years for citations of research to start converging to their final count after it has been published.

Figure 6 - Share of world citations, UK and comparator countries, 1996 to 2022. (Base: all world SCOPUS recorded citations from journals published 1996-2022)

Figure 6 shows a line graph comparing the share of world citations between countries over time. The USA and China have the highest share, with China exceeding the USA from 2019. The UK ranks third in 2022.

Figure 7 (Lower section of Figure 6) - Share of world citations, UK and comparator countries, excluding US and China, 1996 to 2022. This year refers to when the research output was published and not when the citations were received. (Base: all world SCOPUS recorded citations from journals published 1996-2022)

Figure 7 shows a line graph comparing the share of world citations between countries over time. Same data as Figure 6, with the USA and China removed to aid comparison of other countries.

Table 2 - Shares of world citations, values and ranking, UK, EU27, OECD and World, for 2018 and 2022.
Entity 2018 Share (%) 2022 Share (%) Percentage Change CAGR[footnote 20] UK share rank 2018 UK share rank 2022
United Kingdom    10.7 8.8 -17.2% -4.6% - -
EU27 28.8 25.2 -12.4% -3.2% 1[footnote 21] 1[footnote 21]
OECD 71.3 58.1 -18.5% -5.0% 2 2
World 100.0 100.0 - - 3 3

Table 2 shows that, despite its slightly falling share of global citations (as the citations shares of China and India rise), the UK has maintained its ranking. It lies above the EU countries despite its more negative CAGR, second in the OECD and third in the world.

Field-Weighted Citation Impact

Field-weighted citation impact (FWCI) is a measure of the scholarly impact of a set of publications. It compares how the number of citations for a given set of publications compares to the average number of citations received by all world publications in the same field (for a full definition of FWCI, see Appendix 1). A value of 1.0 represents the world average FWCI.

Figure 8 shows the FWCI for all UK scholarly output and comparator countries for the period 1996 to 2022. It shows that the UK occupies a high position; 1st among the comparator countries shown here, which is 3rd in the world. This indicates that for the most part UK publications are cited more than comparable publications from other nations, which is an indicator of the impact of the research. Despite increasing competition in volumes of publications and citations, the UK has maintained its ranking among comparable countries since 2007, when the UK overtook the US whose FWCI values have been declining steadily (-1.5% year-on-year and -5.8% overall, across the 2018 to 2022 period).

While these graphs position the UK as having the highest FWCI among the selected comparable countries, it does not imply that the UK has the highest FWCI globally. Other countries, such as Switzerland, the Netherlands and Singapore, have higher FWCI. However, they are not included in this publication due to their significantly smaller number of total publications and citations, making them less comparable. 

Figure 9 more clearly shows that the UK’s FWCI has remained above 1.50 since 2007, and had a value of 1.54 in 2022. This is 54% above the world average, around 35% above the EU27 average (1.14) and around 36% above the OECD average (1.13), who have seen steady decline in FWCI values over the 2018 to 2022 period (year-on-year decline of -0.6% and -0.7% respectively).

China has experienced sustained growth in FWCI since 1996, increasing beyond the world average in 2017. In 2020, it briefly matched the OECD average score of 1.14, but a slight decline caused it to fall below this average in 2021 and 2022. India, which had a FWCI below the world average for most of the measured period, recorded its first value above 1.0 in 2020 and continued to rise each year, reaching 1.04 in 2022.

Figure 8 - Field-weighted citation impact, UK and comparator countries,1996 to 2022. (Base: all world SCOPUS recorded citations from journals published 1996-2022)

Figure 8 shows a line graph comparing the field-weighted citation impact of countries over time.  The UK leads comparator countries from 2007.

Figure 9 (Detail of Figure 8). Field-weighted citation impact, UK, comparator countries and benchmarking groups OECD and EU27[footnote 22], 2018 to 2022. (Base: all world SCOPUS recorded citations from journals published 2018-2022)

Figure 9 shows a line graph comparing the field-weighted citation impact of countries over time.  Same data as Figure 8, with the timescale truncated to aid comparison.

Table 3 - Field-Weighted Citation Impact (mean), values and ranking, UK, EU27, OECD and World, for 2018 and 2022.
Entity 2018 FWCI 2022 FWCI Percentage Change CAGR[footnote 23]
United Kingdom 1.51 1.54 2.0% 0.5%
EU27 1.17 1.14 -2.6% -0.6%
OECD 1.16 1.13 -2.6% -0.7%
World 1.00 1.00 - -

Note: Table 3 shows the relative performance of the UK, bringing together the FWCI reported in Figure 9 and growth rates for a subset of countries. It does not contain ranking information for the UK. FWCI facilitates useful comparison between certain countries however can prove less accurate when looking at countries with smaller numbers of publications. Because of this a ranking may produce results that do not reflect the true impact of a country’s scholarly output.

Highly-cited publication share

Examining the global distribution of highly-cited publications (those in the top 1%) provides a clearer comparison of the performance of leading research bases at the country level.

Figure 10 shows the global distribution of highly-cited publications (those in the top 1%), and provides a clearer comparison. Up until 2016, the UK has seen a steady increase in its share of the world’s highly-cited publications, peaking at 15.6%. Since then, UK share of highly -cited publications has been in decline (-4.7% year-on-year and 17.6% overall between 2018 and 2022) with a share of 11.8% in 2022.

The US has experienced a continuous downward trend in its share of world highly-cited publications since 1996. This decline became steeper after 2016 (-10.7% year-on-year and -36.3% overall in the 2018 to 2022 period). China’s share growth in the world’s highly-cited publications has accelerated in recent years (13.2% year-on-year and 64.4% overall in the 2018 to 2022 period). While most of the traditionally research-intensive countries are producing the same or slightly more publications year-on-year, China and India are producing significantly more each year, contributing to the shifting dynamics in highly-cited publication shares.

Figure 10 - Share of world’s highly cited publications (top 1% cited publications), UK and comparator countries, 1996 to 2022. (Base: all world SCOPUS recorded citations from journals published 1996-2022)

Figure 10 shows a line graph comparing the share of highly cited publications between countries over time. The USA and China have the highest share. The UK ranks third in 2022.

Figure 11 better shows that Germany, Canada and France have experience downward trends in their share of the world’s highly-cited publications since around 2016 (-5.5%, -3.0% and -7.1% respectively year-on-year between 2018 and 2022). On the other hand, South Korea and India have experienced the opposite trend, slow and consistent growth since 1996 for South Korea, and high growth, especially between 2019 and 2022, for India (3.1% and 18.0% respectively year-on-year between 2018 and 2022).

Figure 11 (Detail of Figure 10) - Share of world’s highly cited publications, UK and comparator countries, excluding US and China, 1996 to 2022. (Base: all world SCOPUS recorded citations from journals published 1996-2022)

Figure 11 shows a line graph comparing the share of highly cited publications between countries over time. Same data as Figure 10, with the USA and China removed to aid comparison of other countries.

Table 4 - Share of total world highly-cited publications (top 1%), values and ranking, UK, EU27, OECD and World, for 2018 and 2022.
Entity 2018 Share (%) 2022 Share (%) Percentage Change CAGR[footnote 24] UK share rank 2018 UK share rank 2022
United Kingdom 14.0% 12.0% -17.6% -4.7% - -
EU27 31.0% 25.0% -16.7% -4.5% 1[footnote 25] 1[footnote 25]
OECD 78.0% 59.0% -23.5% -6.5% 2 2
World 100.0% 100.0% - - 3 3

Table 4 shows despite gradual decline in its share of the world’s highly-cited publication the UK has maintained its place above EU countries, second in the OECD and third in the world.

While in the period of 2018 to 2022 the UK’s share of total world publications and of world highly-cited publications has declined, the UK’s share of world high-cited publications (11.8% in 2022) is nearly double its world publication share (6.0% in 2022). This implies that UK publications have a disproportionately large impact relative to those of other countries.

Figure 12 shows comparator countries’ positions on the share of total publication and highly-cited (H-C) publication share axes, for each year in the period 2018 to 2022. The lines represent countries’ transitions in volume vs high-impact over this period. The US and China have recorded high shares in both publication volume (18.2% and 25.4% in 2022, respectively) and highly-cited publications (26.9% and 46.4% in 2022, respectively). However, the US is seeing a decline while China is seeing a growth in both indicators.

Figure 13 provides detail missing from Figure 12, by removing the US and China. Canada, France, Germany and the UK show noticeable decline in both measurements across the five years. Japan remains fairly static in share of the world’s highly-cited publications, but declining slightly in share of work-publications. On the other hand, India is the only measured country here to show consistent growth in their shares in both metrics, indicating a relative increase in both output and research impact.

Figure 12 - Share of worlds highly-cited publications versus share of world’s publications, UK and comparator countries, 2018 to 2022. (Base: all world SCOPUS recorded scholarly output published 2018-2022)

Figure 12 shows a chart showing movement of highly cited publications relative to total publications over time. The UK and many other comparison countries show a declining share of highly-cited publications. China and India have a rising share of highly-cited publications.

Note: The lines represent transition from 2016 to 2020, with vertical reading representing a change in share of total world H-C publications and the horizontal line representing a change in share of total world publications. The arrow represents the direction of change.

Figure 13 (Detail of Figure 12) - Share of world’s highly-cited publications versus share of world’s publications, UK and comparator countries excluding the US and China, 2018 to 2022. (Base: all world SCOPUS recorded scholarly output published 2018-2022)

Figure 13 shows a chart showing movement of highly cited publications relative to total publications over time, with the USA and China removed to aid comparison of other countries.

4. Collaboration

4.1 Key findings

There are four types of collaboration:

  • Single authorship (a publication authored by a single author)
  • Only institutional collaboration (a publication which was co-authored by at least two researchers, but all authors affiliated to the same institution)
  • Only national collaboration (a publication which was co-authored by at least two researchers affiliated to at least two different institutions, within the same country)
  • International collaboration (a publication which was co-authored by at least two researchers affiliated to institutions in different countries)

A single publication is assigned to a single collaboration type to ensure that the sum of an entity’s publications across the four types adds up to 100%. See appendix 1 for a more detailed explanation.

UK researchers are highly collaborative internationally. In 2022, 60.4% of all publications were produced in collaboration with at least one non-UK author. As shown in Figure 14, the only other countries with similarly high levels of international collaboration are France and Canada (57.3% and 56.6%, respectively in 2022). India, China and Russia have the lowest share of internationally co-authored publications out of compared countries, all less than half that of the UK’s . Most countries show continued growth in the share of international co-authorship with the exception of China.

Figure 14 - Annual share of internationally co-authored publications, UK and comparators, 2018 to 2022. (Base: all world SCOPUS recorded scholarly output published 2018-2022)

Figure 14 shows a chart of annual share of internationally co-authored publications over time. Most countries show an increasing tendency to international collaboration, with the UK most collaborative of countries compared.

Table 5 shows how Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI) varies depending on collaboration type. In all cases a country’s FWCI for single authored, institutional-only or national-only publications is lower than the FWCI for its publications with international collaboration.

Among the comparator countries listed, the UK has the highest FWCI across all collaboration types. For all countries FWCI falls as the degree of collaboration decreases international versus national, national versus institutional, and institutional versus single authorship. The only exception is Russia, which has the same FWCI for both institutional and national collaborations.

Table 5 - Field-weighted citation impact (mean) by collaboration type, for the UK, comparator countries, EU27, OECD and World, 2018 to 2022.
Country Single author Institutional National International
United Kingdom 0.89 1.17 1.35 1.88
Brazil 0.38 0.59 0.64 1.45
Canada 0.81 1.02 1.07 1.87
China 0.51 0.80 1.03 1.81
France 0.47 0.67 0.91 1.69
Germany 0.64 0.93 1.06 1.74
India 0.55 0.78 0.88 1.62
Italy 0.59 1.09 1.15 1.80
Japan 0.48 0.60 0.71 1.58
Russia 0.40 0.48 0.48 1.36
South Korea 0.53 0.83 0.89 1.76
United States 0.76 1.14 1.33 1.76
EU27 0.62 0.91 0.99 1.53
OECD 0.71 0.97 1.11 1.51
World 0.61 0.85 1.00 1.50
Figure 15 - Share of internationally co-authored publications versus Field-Weighted Citation Impact (mean), for the UK, comparator countries, 2022.

Figure 15 shows a scatter plot which demonstrates a positive correlation between international co-operation and field-weighted citation impact.

Figure 15 illustrates the relationship between international collaboration and field-weighted citation impact (FWCI) for various countries in 2022. The x-axis represents the share of international co-authorship, while the y-axis shows the FWCI. Each data point corresponds to a different country.

The trend line indicates a positive correlation between international collaboration and FWCI. This suggests that countries with a higher share of international co-authorship tend to achieve greater citation impact. For instance, countries like the United Kingdom, Germany, and Canada, which have higher international collaboration shares, also exhibit higher FWCI values.

5. Appendix 1

5.1 Indicators and Methodology

For assessment and comparison of performance of the UK and comparator countries, the following indicators were used.

  • Total publications – the total scholarly output for a given entity in a given time.

  • Share of total world publications – a ratio of country’s research output volume over the world’s total publication output volume.

  • Activity Index (Research Activity Index) – a metric used to assess the research output or activity of a particular institution, country, or field relative to a broader benchmark (e.g., global research output). The formula to calculate this is:

Activity Index =
(Share of Publications in a Field for Entity / Total Publications for Entity) ÷
(Share of Publications in a Field Globally / Total Publications Globally)

  • Subject area – To analyse performance of the UK and comparators in different subject fields, Fields of Research and Development (FORD) classification is used. This classification is used in the Frascati Manual of the OECD[footnote 26].

  • Share of total world citations – Citation count is the number of citations received by a publication from subsequently published publications. Share of total world citations is a ratio of the number of a citations country’s publications have received over the number of citations World’s publications have received in the same period.

  • Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI) – FWCI is a measure of the impact of a group of publications. It compares how the number of citations of an entity’s[footnote 27] publications compare to the average number of citations received by all other World publications published in the same year, discipline, and format (book, article, review, conference paper), for which data is available in the database.

  • Share of total world highly-cited publications – a ratio of a country’s number of highly-cited publications over the world’s number of highly-cited publications.

  • International collaboration share – a ratio of a country’s publications that were co-authored with at least one foreign author over the country’s total number of publications.

  • International, national, institutional collaboration share and single authorship – each publication is assigned to 1 of 4 mutually exclusive collaboration types, based on its affiliation information: international, national, institutional, or single authorship. A single publication is assigned a single collaboration type to ensure that the sum of an entity’s publications across the 4 categories adds up to 100% of the publications with the necessary affiliation information .

  • FWCI of International, National, Institutional Collaboration and Single authorship – This is the FWCI as defined above which considers only publications co-authored internationally, nationally, institutionally and with a single authorship, respectively.

Percentage change – as defined in introduction. Its formula is:

(Vfinal - Vinitial)/Vinitial

where Vfinal is the final, Vinitial is the initial value.

CAGR – as defined in the Introduction. Its formula is

CAGR=(Vfinal/Vinitial )(1/t) - 1

where Vfinal is the final value, Vinitial is the initial value and t is the period in years.

  • Ranks – Rank of the UK in a group of countries is calculated as a position of the UK within a set of countries (OECD, World) in terms of values of the observed indicator. An exception is made for the EU27, where the UK is included to allow for ranking.

Types of collaboration – decision diagram[footnote 28]:

Flowchart demonstrating logic for assigning collaboration status to publications based on number and location of authors

5.2 List of comparator countries

A consistent list of comparator countries has been used to benchmark the UK across all metrics. When rankings have been used these represent the UK’s rank compared to these countries, not rank globally. Comparator countries are as follows:

Brazil
Canada
China
France
Germany
India
Italy
Japan
Russia
South Korea
United Kingdom
United States

In some instances country groups have been used to further facilitate comparisons.

These are:

EU27
OECD
World (total)

  1. The dates and years mentioned refer to the publication dates of the research outputs. The data source for this report is Elsevier’s SciVal. ↩

  2. International comparison of the UK research base, 2022; International comparison of the UK research base, 2019; Performance of the UK research base: international comparison, 2016; Performance of the UK research base: international comparison - 2013; UK research base international comparative performance 2011 ↩

  3. FWCI measures the impact of a research paper by comparing its citations to the average citations of similar papers in the same field. ↩

  4. Subject areas including: Humanities; Social Sciences; Medical Sciences; Engineering and Technologies; Agricultural Sciences; and Natural Sciences. ↩

  5. Average here representing the world average Activity Index (ratio of the country’s subject share of all country publications to the World’s subject share of all world publications) in a certain subject area. ↩

  6. The last publication while released in 2022, compared data up to 2020. ↩

  7. Among comparator countries. ↩

  8. International comparison of the UK research base, 2022 ↩

  9. EU 27 entry represents all current European Union countries. ↩

  10. Marhl, M., Markovič, R., Grubelnik, V. and Perc, M., 2024. The changing world dynamics of research performance. Scientometrics. Available at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-024-05199-6 ↩

  11. About Elsevier website ↩

  12. The database is drawn from over 7,000 publishers and 90 million core records. For further information, see: About Scopus webpage ↩

  13. Explanation from Elsevier (principal owners of Scival and underlying SCOPUS data) on the mismatch in publication numbers for a particular year: “This discrepancy may occur due to the dynamic nature of the Scopus database. Articles and journals are periodically added or removed based on quality assessments. New articles may be indexed from the journal’s inception date or even retrospectively, leading to fluctuations in publication counts. These changes can also impact citation numbers for prior years.”, Elsevier, January 2025. ↩

  14. Vera-Baceta M-A, Thelwall M, Kousha K. Web of Science and Scopus language coverage. Scientometrics. 2019 Dec 1;121(3):1803–13. Available at: https://wlv.openrepository.com/handle/2436/622864 ↩

  15. Frascati manual webpage ↩

  16. CAGR stands for Compound Annual Growth Rate. See Methodology Section for definition. ↩

  17. UK’s ranking when compared to each of the 27 countries that make the EU, EU27 does not include the UK in this report. ↩ ↩2

  18. Hu, X., & Rousseau, R. (2009) “A comparative study of the difference in research performance in biomedical fields among selected Western and Asian countries” Scientometrics, 81 (2) pp. 475-491.  ↩

  19. Also known as the Research Activity Index (RAI) ↩

  20. CAGR stands for Compound Annual Growth Rate. See Methodology Section for definition. ↩

  21. UK’s ranking when compared to each of the 27 countries that make the EU, EU27 does not include the UK in this report. ↩ ↩2

  22. The y axis has been narrowed to improve visualisations (1.0 to 1.6), resulting in 5 countries being removed. ↩

  23. CAGR stands for Compound Annual Growth Rate. See Methodology Section for definition. ↩

  24. CAGR stands for Compound Annual Growth Rate. See Methodology Section for definition. ↩

  25. UK’s ranking when compared to each of the 27 countries that make the EU, EU27 does not include the UK in this report. ↩ ↩2

  26. Frascati manual webpage ↩

  27. Here, entity represents an institution, country or a group of countries. In this publication it is used to gauge impact for individual countries and groups of countries (EU27, OECD and World). ↩

  28. Research metrics guidebook ↩

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