Sci-Bytes> Science in France
Week of August 21, 2011
France’s world share of science and social-science papers over a recent five-year period, expressed as a percentage of papers in each of 21 fields in the Thomson Reuters database. Also, France’s relative citation impact compared to the world average in each field, in percentage terms.
| Field | % papers fr. France | Impact vs. world |
|---|---|---|
| Space Science | 13.29 | +24 |
| Mathematics | 8.83 | +13 |
| Geosciences | 8.47 | +37 |
| Physics | 7.60 | +30 |
| Microbiology | 6.70 | +19 |
| Immunology | 6.36 | +13 |
| Molecular Biology & Genetics | 6.28 | +19 |
| Computer Science | 5.70 | +4 |
| Biology & Biochemistry | 5.52 | +9 |
| France's overall percent share, all fields: 5.52 | ||
| Clinical Medicine | 5.42 | +19 |
| Neuroscience & Behavior | 5.28 | +7 |
| Chemistry | 5.27 | +16 |
| Engineering | 5.07 | +13 |
| Environment/Ecology | 4.97 | +24 |
| Materials Science | 4.85 | +18 |
| Plant & Animal Science | 4.68 | +48 |
| Agricultural Sciences | 4.33 | +30 |
| Economics & Business | 4.21 | -18 |
| Pharmacology & Toxicology | 3.83 | +26 |
| Psychiatry/Psychology | 2.73 | -21 |
| Social Sciences | 1.87 | -21 |
Between 2006 and 2010, Thomson Reuters indexed 298,286 papers that listed at least one author address in France. Of those papers, the highest percentage appeared in journals indexed under the main heading of space science, with mathematics a distant second. As the right-hand column shows, the impact (cites per paper) mark for space-science papers featuring France-based authors was 24% above the world average for the field (9.76 cites per paper for France versus the world mark of 7.88 cites). France’s relative-impact performance was also strong in plant & animal science (48% above the world average), geosciences (37% above), and physics and agricultural sciences (both +30%).
SOURCE: InCitesTM Global Comparisons, Thomson Reuters.
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FIELDS, 2001-August 31, 2011.