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Leading countries in global science increasingly receive more citations than other countries doing similar research

Author

Listed:
  • Charles J. Gomez

    (City University of New York)

  • Andrew C. Herman

    (University of California)

  • Paolo Parigi

    (Institute for Social Science Research (IRiSS) at Stanford University)

Abstract

Citations and text analysis are both used to study the distribution and flow of ideas between researchers, fields and countries, but the resulting flows are rarely equal. We argue that the differences in these two flows capture a growing global inequality in the production of scientific knowledge. We offer a framework called ‘citational lensing’ to identify where citations should appear between countries but are absent given that what is embedded in their published abstract texts is highly similar. This framework also identifies where citations are overabundant given lower similarity. Our data come from nearly 20 million papers across nearly 35 years and 150 fields from the Microsoft Academic Graph. We find that scientific communities increasingly centre research from highly active countries while overlooking work from peripheral countries. This inequality is likely to pose substantial challenges to the growth of novel ideas.

Suggested Citation

  • Charles J. Gomez & Andrew C. Herman & Paolo Parigi, 2022. "Leading countries in global science increasingly receive more citations than other countries doing similar research," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 6(7), pages 919-929, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nathum:v:6:y:2022:i:7:d:10.1038_s41562-022-01351-5
    DOI: 10.1038/s41562-022-01351-5
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    Cited by:

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    2. Nakajima, Kazuki & Liu, Ruodan & Shudo, Kazuyuki & Masuda, Naoki, 2023. "Quantifying gender imbalance in East Asian academia: Research career and citation practice," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 17(4).
    3. Honglin Bao & Misha Teplitskiy, 2024. "A simulation-based analysis of the impact of rhetorical citations in science," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-11, December.
    4. Zsolt Kohus & Márton Demeter & Gyula Péter Szigeti & László Kun & Eszter Lukács & Katalin Czakó, 2022. "The Influence of International Collaboration on the Scientific Impact in V4 Countries," Publications, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-13, September.
    5. Ekaterina Dyachenko & Iurii Agafonov & Katerina Guba & Alexander Gelvikh, 2024. "Independent Russian medical science: is there any?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 129(9), pages 5577-5597, September.
    6. Fengyuan Liu & Petter Holme & Matteo Chiesa & Bedoor AlShebli & Talal Rahwan, 2023. "Gender inequality and self-publication are common among academic editors," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 7(3), pages 353-364, March.

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