China may become strongest research country by 2020

Jonathan Adams, a research evaluation director at Thomson Reuters believes that if China continues on the path of its current trajectory, it will become the largest producer of peer reviewed articles by 2020.

According to James Wildson, the director of science policy at the Royal Society, China’s gains in research can be attributed to three major factors; the first of which is the massive investments in research made by China’s government. This has significant impact on an industry whose primary source of capital is research grants. The second factor Wildson cited was the “organized flow of knowledge from basic science to commercial applications,” or simply put; China tends to perform research with practical application.