Science Citation Index Ranking Rises to 12th

Korea ranked 12th last year in the number of published papers listed in the Science Citation Index, up from 13th in 2006, but its citation rate reflecting a paper`s quality dropped from 28th place to 30th.

The Education, Science and Technology Ministry said yesterday that it surveyed the number of papers included in the index last year by country and subject, and found that Korea had 25,494 papers listed, up 9.43 percent or 2,197 papers.

The country`s number in 2006 was 23,297, good for 13th.

The United States last year ranked first in the number of papers listed in the index (293,371), followed by the United Kingdom (79,884); China (79,674); Germany (73,184); and Japan (70,531).

China ranked fifth with 69,684 listed papers in 2006, but added 9,990 last year to rapidly close the gap with the United Kingdom.

By school, Harvard University ranked first with 10,258 papers, followed by the University of Tokyo with 7,308; the University of Toronto in Canada 6,170; the University of California-Los Angeles 6,000; and the University of Michigan 5,962.

Despite the rise in the number of Korean papers in the index, the country`s citation rate calculated every five years remained sluggish.

The citation number of a Korean paper was 3.44 last year (between 2003 and 2007), up from 3.27 in 2006 (between 2003 and 2006), but Korea`s rank in this category fell to 30th from 28th.

foryou@donga.com