“The United States faces a strategic inflection point” in global collaboration, according to data analytics provider Clarivate.
What it refers to as “mainland China” had a commanding lead in research content last year, with 878 000 articles and review stored in the Web of Science core collection, compared to 509 000 from the United States and 652 000 by the EU.
The US is also challenged by China for international research collaboration, revealed by an analysis of Web of Science data. In terms of impact, China is now within “touching distance” of the United States on citation impact. China is also expanding research paper collaborations while the US market share is falling in developing markets, notably in Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Middle East.
“Whereas the U.S. was seen in the past as the natural long-term partner, and as the preferred destination for aspiring young researchers from all these regions, this may no longer be the case,” Clarivate warns.
A declining network will reduce the flow of talent, information and innovative knowledge to the U.S. economy” the data analyst predicts. It argues cross-border collaborative papers “consistently outperform” domestic author-only publication citation impact and that China-EU papers are on par with those by Euro-American authors.
“Policy shifts, including restrictions on foreign collaboration and reduced funding for key areas, such as mRNA research, risk isolating the U.S. and weakening its global influence.”
The takeout: “policymakers should balance national security concerns with the need for open scientific exchange, especially in critical and emerging technologies.”