Earlier this week, Unesco published its UNESCO Science Report: Towards 2030 which addresses many of the current challenges science faces, as well as achievements thus far.
It reveals that the gap in R&D is narrowing globally, and also recognises a ‘remarkable growth’ in the number of researchers globally, rising some 21% since 2007. It adds:
The EU remains the world leader for the number of researchers, with a 22.2% share. Since 2011, China (19.1%) has overtaken the USA (16.7%), as predicted by the UNESCO Science Report 2010, despite a downward readjustment of the Chinese figures since this publication’s release. Japan’s world share has shrunk from 10.7% (2007) to 8.5% (2013) and the Russian Federation’s share from 7.3% to 5.7%.
The Big Five [China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States] thus still account for 72% of all researchers, even if there has been a reshuffle in their respective shares. Of note is that the high-income countries have ceded some ground to the upper middle-income countries, including China; the latter accounted for 22.5% of researchers in 2007 but 28.0% in 2013.
The report also highlights that the number of international students is ‘growing rapidly’ and that there is ‘increasing mobility at doctoral level, which, in turn, is driving the mobility of scientists’.
It then adds that ‘this is perhaps one of the most important trends of recent times’, suggesting that establishing pools of talent – with scientists and researchers – is essential for the ambitions of a nation-state’s development plans.
The EU also still leads the world for publications (34%), followed by the USA on 25%.
