S.K. Ranked 14th in SCI

Research accomplishment of experts of science and technology in South Korea is improving but still far from reaching the level of advanced countries.

Pohang University of Science and Technology analyzed SCI of Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) on the request of the Ministry of Education and Human Resource Development and reported on the 26th that theses of South Korea which were published in the international journal accounted for 14,612 and ranked in the 14th, up from the 16th in 2000.

SCI is a list of superior scientific journals of 3900. Every year the ISI publishes a scientific journals list of top 15% of quoted rate and influencing power and this is used to compare the level of science and technology of each country.

The U.S. (283,996), Japan (71,962), the U.K. (71,615), Germany (65,802), France (46,188), Italy (33,678), Canada (33,382) and China (25,684) hold high ranks.

Theses per one million capita of Switzerland were 19.4 and Switzerland was ranked the first. Those of South Korea was 3.0 and ranked 27th, up from 29 in 2001.

Seoul National University ranked 37th (2,589) which is up from 55th, but was far behind other high ranking university such as Harvard University (9,218), Tokyo University (6,439), UCLA (5,343) and Washington University (5054).

In addition, twelve universities of South Korea including KAIST (162nd), Yonsei University (167th), Sungkyunkwan University (279th), Pohang University of Science and Technology (284th) and Korea University (287th) were ranked within top 500.

On the other hand, Seoul University was ranked first in the analysis of scientific theses published by domestic universities, KAIST was ranked 2nd and then Yonsei University and Pohang University of Science and Technology 3rd and 4th respectively. KAIST (14.8) was ranked first in theses per one professor, then Seoul University (9.9), Yonsei University (4.8), Sogang University (4.1), Korea University (4.1) and Hanyang University (3.7).

Seong-Chul Hong sungchul@donga.com