Cross‐national information flows in basic research: Examples taken from physics

Cross‐national information flows are investigated for three energy‐related fields of physics using the referencing data appearing in physics journals. In all three fields, U.S. research appears to be the most heavily referenced research in the world, with Soviet research coming in second. An examination of “balance of information” flows shows that the U.S. consistently experiences a negative balance. That is, foreign scientists reference U.S. work more frequently than do U.S. scientists reference foreign work. In contrast, the USSR consistently experiences a positive balance of information flow. An examination of cross‐national information flows shows that there are marked disparities in the extent to which the research produced in different countries is referenced. These disparities may be accounted for by cultural, ethnocentric, and linguistic factors; by the varying quality of research performed in different countries; and by simple ignorance of research that is being undertaken in locales out of the research mainstream.