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. 2013 Jun 20;8(6):e66449.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0066449. Print 2013.

Impact of GDP, spending on R&D, number of universities and scientific journals on research publications among Asian countries

Sultan Ayoub Meo  1 , Abeer A Al Masri, Adnan Mahmood Usmani, Almas Naeem Memon, Syed Ziauddin Zaidi
Affiliations

Impact of GDP, spending on R&D, number of universities and scientific journals on research publications among Asian countries

Sultan Ayoub Meo et al. PLoS One. .

Erratum in

  • PLoS One. 2013;8(10). doi:10.1371/annotation/3a739c2a-d5f2-4d6f-9e0d-890d5a54c33d

Abstract

Objectives: This study aimed to compare the impact of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, spending on Research and Development (R&D), number of universities, and Indexed Scientific Journals on total number of research documents (papers), citations per document and Hirsch index (H-index) in various science and social science subjects among Asian countries.

Materials and methods: In this study, 40 Asian countries were included. The information regarding Asian countries, their GDP per capita, spending on R&D, total number of universities and indexed scientific journals were collected. We recorded the bibliometric indicators, including total number of research documents, citations per document and H-index in various science and social sciences subjects during the period 1996-2011. The main sources for information were World Bank, SCI-mago/Scopus and Web of Science; Thomson Reuters.

Results: The mean per capita GDP for all the Asian countries is 14448.31±2854.40 US$, yearly per capita spending on R&D 0.64±0.16 US$, number of universities 72.37±18.32 and mean number of ISI indexed journal per country is 17.97±7.35. The mean of research documents published in various science and social science subjects among all the Asian countries during the period 1996-2011 is 158086.92±69204.09; citations per document 8.67±0.48; and H-index 122.8±19.21. Spending on R&D, number of universities and indexed journals have a positive correlation with number of published documents, citations per document and H-index in various science and social science subjects. However, there was no association between the per capita GDP and research outcomes.

Conclusion: The Asian countries who spend more on R&D have a large number of universities and scientific indexed journals produced more in research outcomes including total number of research publication, citations per documents and H-index in various science and social science subjects.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Correlation coefficient between spending on R&D and total number of research documents in various science and social science subjects among Asian countries during the period 1996–2011.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Correlation coefficient between the number of universities and total number of research documents in various science and social science subjects among Asian countries during the period 1996–2011.
Figure 3
Figure 3. Correlation coefficient between scientific indexed journals and total number of research documents in various science and social science subjects among Asian countries during the period 1996–2011.
Figure 4
Figure 4. Correlation coefficient between per capita GDP and total number of research documents in various science and social science subjects among Asian countries during the period 1996–2011.
Figure 5
Figure 5. Association between per capita GDP and total number of research documents published in various science and social sciences subjects among Asian countries during the period 1996–2011.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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