The trend of concentration in scientific research and technological innovation: A reduction of the predominant role of the U.S. in world research & technology

This study investigates the trend of global concentration in scientific research and technological innovation around the world. It accepts papers and patents as appropriate data for revealing the development and status of science and technology respectively. The performance of these outputs in production and citation impact is taken into consideration in the analysis. The findings suggest that both papers and patents are geographically concentrated on a small number of countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, and France. China has made great progress in paper production and citation impact, and Taiwan and Korea have experienced a rapid growth in patents over the past years. The degree of concentration dramatically decreases when the data from the United States are excluded, indicating the effects of the U.S.’s participation on the concentration. Patents show a higher degree of concentration than papers. With time-varying aspects taken into consideration, the study indicates that the degree of concentration of papers and patents has gradually decreased over time. The concentration of patents has declined more slowly than that of papers. This decrease of the concentration is mainly due to the reduction of the predominant role of the U.S. in world R&D output. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.