China published more than 15,000 papers in 163 high-impact journals across 178 disciplines in 2024, representing 35.2 percent of the global total, according to the Annual Report on China’s Science and Technology Papers. The finding was reported by China Daily.
Published by the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China under the Ministry of Science and Technology, the report also showed that China led the world in both the number and citation count of papers published in 377 top international scientific journals across 2024. Collectively, these 154,000 papers were cited more than one million times.
The average citation rate of Chinese papers – 17.24 per paper – has beaten the global average for the second year in a row, the report revealed.
The country leads the world in citation counts for nine scientific disciplines: materials science, engineering technology, chemistry, environmental and ecological sciences, physics, computer science, agricultural sciences, pharmacology and toxicology, and mathematics.
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Researchers attributed this growth to improved research facilities, stronger emphasis on fundamental science and greater collaboration among institutions.
As of August, China had published 2,342 so-called “hot papers,” or studies published in the past two years that are highly cited. That was up 4.6 percent year-on-year and accounted for over half of the global total. The US followed with 1,511 such papers.
The report also highlighted China’s growing international research ties. Around 20 percent of its international papers were co-authored with foreign peers, and Chinese scientists were listed as first authors in about three-quarters of those collaborations.
China’s most frequent partners were the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, Germany and Singapore. Nearly one-third of China’s highly cited papers last year were co-authored internationally, underscoring the country’s increasing integration into the global research community.
