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A man swims in a pool inside a condominium in Singapore March 21, 2010. REUTERS/Nicky Loh.

The Republic of Singapore, despite a science base and research output that are modest compared with the larger "Asian Tiger" nations of South Korea and Taiwan, has markedly increased its presence on the world scientific stage in recent years. Even more significantly, the impact of Singapore-based research now registers strongly in many fields, including materials science, chemistry, and engineering.

To examine Singapore’s scientific progress, Science Watch turned to InCites^TM Global Comparisons from Clarivate, and its store of publication and citation data.

graph 1

View larger graph in the tab below.

The graph to the immediate right tracks Singapore’s year-by-year output of papers, representing all fields, in Clarivate-indexed journals since 1990. Also graphed is the city-state’s corresponding percentage of world scientific literature (based on papers with at least one author address in Singapore). From fewer than 900 papers in 1990, Singapore’s total jumped to exceed 8,000 in 2009—an increase of over 900%. Singapore’s overall percent share of the world total rose commensurately over the two decades, from 0.14% to 0.73%.

As noted above, Singapore’s tally of nearly 8,500 papers in 2009 does not approach the output of, for example, South Korea and its total of nearly 40,000, or Taiwan and its 25,000 for the year. On the other hand, Singapore’s concentration in key technological fields, and the overall impact of its research as measured by citations, suggests that resources have been apportioned wisely.

In the tab below labeled "Singapore's Research Output by Specialty Area," the table shows the specific fields to which Singapore contributed its highest percent shares of papers indexed between 2005 and 2009. (The field designations represent the more than 250 specialty areas employed in the classification scheme for Clarivate Web of Science^®.)

As the table shows, Singapore’s largest share of any field during the five-year period was in the "hardware" specialty of computer science, with Singapore’s 801 papers representing 2.69% of the field. In all, the 20 fields shown here demonstrate Singapore’s concentration in computer science, materials, and engineering (with notable variations that include biomaterials, cell & tissue engineering, and biomedical engineering).

The table’s two right-most columns show, respectively, Singapore’s impact (cites per paper) in each specialty area, and the corresponding world average for the field during the five-year period. In all but two of the fields shown, the impact of Singapore-based research exceeds the world average. In some fields, such as biomaterials and biomedical engineering, Singapore’s comparative impact is striking.

Graph 2

View larger graph in the tab below.

Examining broader trends in impact over a longer time period, the graph to the immediate right tracks Singapore’s citation impact in overlapping five-year periods from 1986 to 2009, measuring it against the world average in the field for each period (with the world figure represented on the graph as 1.00). Of the five broad fields shown, materials science is clearly the standout, surpassing the world average around the early 2000s and trending upward ever since. Engineering and chemistry are also on trajectories that are now well above the world mark.

Singapore’s progress, it should be noted, extends beyond the physical or applied sciences. In a comparison of the change in Singapore’s paper output in various main fields over two successive five-year periods—2000 to 2004 and 2005 to 2009—the highest percent increase in number of papers was in the main field of agricultural sciences (an increase of 172%), followed by molecular biology & genetics (+169%),  and pharmacology & toxicology (+158%). In all those fields, Singapore’s citation impact exceeded the world average for the period 2005 to 2009, indicating that these will likely be areas of increasing strength in the years ahead.

In recent months, the Times Higher Education magazine, using data compiled by Clarivate, has presented listings showcasing other aspects of Singapore’s distinction, based on research published in the last decade. These listings have highlighted, for example, the city-state’s prominence among all nations in materials science, as measured by citation impact (view); its placement atop the roster of member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, by virtue of total citations and citations per paper (view); and its perch in the top spot among Asia Pacific nations in chemistry as determined by impact (view).

In an editorial in December, 2010, Nature reported that the financial climate that boosted Singapore’s science enterprise during the last decade or so—generous support for basic research, recruitment of prominent scientists from abroad, etc.—is about to change, as the government has decided to shift substantial funding to research that can be demonstrably tied to industrial application (Nature, 468: 731, 9 December 2010). The effect on the city-state’s "impressive experiment," as the editorial put it, remains to be seen. But the extent of Singapore’s achievement to date is certainly clear.

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