JAPAN

Japan lags behind counterparts in COVID research papers

Japan ranked 16th in the world in terms of cited papers on novel coronavirus research as of June 2021, according to an analysis by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), far behind its industrialised counterparts, reports The Japan News.

The JST analysed about 186,400 papers registered in an international database in 2020 and 2021 by country of affiliation of leading researchers. The United States topped the list with 57,030, followed by Britain with 21,682 and China with 20,535. Japan came in 14th with 4,087.

A closer analysis of the top 0.1% of high-quality research papers in terms of citation count from January 2020 to June 2021 found that 607 were from the United States, 385 from China, and 196 from Britain. Japan ranked 16th with 17 papers, behind South Korea and Iran at 14th with 23 papers each.
Full report on the Asia News Network site