Clarivate's annual G20 scorecard report

 Clarivate, a global leader in providing trusted information and insights to accelerate the pace of innovation, has launched its annual report which examines the research performance of each of the members of the G20 with a visual comparative snapshot for each.  

The report, The Annual G20 Scorecard – Research Performance 2022, has been created by the Institute for Scientific Information™ at Clarivate to coincide with this year's G20 Summit hosted by Bali. It includes both a written summary and an array of graphs and exhibits that highlight the research performance of Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mainland China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States. 

Jonathan Adams, Chief Scientist at the Institute for Scientific Information at Clarivate and a co-author of the annual report said: “Our Annual G20 Scorecard provides a consistent benchmark of regional research economies for governments, funders and research institutions.  

“The yearly assessment of comparative metrics allows us to accurately compare performance and to spot early warning signs of any changes to investment, as the G20 respond to the climate and health challenges of the future.” 

The research profiles within the report are selective, highlighting chosen topics of current policy interest that identify good signals of the health of the research base for each G20 member. Key factors that contribute to impactful research are laid out for each and benchmarked. 

Some key findings include: 

• Australian international impact continuing to be the highest among the G20 at 1.67. Output continues to rise, driven by the mathematical and physical sciences, where output has doubled, and engineering, where output has trebled in the last decade.  
• Mainland China’s output has tripled in a decade, with more than a third of a million papers published in the mathematical and physical sciences (including chemistry and materials science) in 2021 alone. Impact is above the world and G20 averages. Much of this output, however, is domestic; consistently only a quarter is internationally collaborative.  
• In Saudi Arabia more than four-fifths of all output is now internationally collaborative, with the total output having more than doubled between 2018 and 2021. This leads to an impact well above world average.  
• Research expenditure in South Korea is the highest in the G20 with GERD per GDP at 4.8% and patents per BERD is also high. Productivity, however, remains low.  
• The United Kingdom’s research impact is strong, with even domestic impact performing better than the overall G20 average in the Impact Profile. Even so, by 2021, more than two-thirds of output was international. Open access is above average and strong in most disciplines, except for the Arts.  
• The United States’ collaborative impact is highest among the G20, although other countries have a higher Category Normalised Citation Impact (CNCI). Like the UK, and in contrast to most other countries, domestic collaborative impact is higher than that for international output.