Finland tops scientific publishing table
The number of publications by Finnish researchers in international journals has increased significantly, a new report by the Academy of Finland has found. The survey, 'Finnish Science in International Comparison: A Bibliometric Analysis', found that over the past 20 years the number of publications by Finnish researchers in internationally esteemed scientific journals had increased 2.5 fold to reach a peak of 8,300 publications in 2005. This makes Finland one of the world's biggest publishers of scientific research, relative to population and GDP, ahead of traditionally strong scientific intensive countries such as the UK and Germany. In terms of the number of publications, the study found Finnish researchers have a predilection for the natural sciences (43%) and the medical sciences (39%), followed by engineering and technology (around 10%) and agricultural sciences (3%). Since joining the European Union in 1995, Finland's researchers have published more often in international journals. Much of this increase can be attributed to greater international and European cooperation. From 1995 to 2004, the number of joint publications with European colleagues rose by 85 per cent. Sweden, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and France were the major partner countries. In addition, Finnish scientific research experienced its fastest growth in the early 1990s, while the 1980s were the growth period for other OECD countries such the United States, Germany, France and the UK. In the early 2000s, southern European countries such as Portugal and Turkey witnessed the strongest growth, as well as China and South Korea. Finland is one of the most research-intensive countries in the world. In 2003, national spending on research and development totalled over €5 billion, or 3.49% of GDP. The private business sector accounts for 70% of total R&D funding. Finland also has the EU's highest number of people working in R&D as a proportion of the employed population. In 2003, the figure stood at 16.2 person-years per 1,000 employed persons, and rising.
Countries
Finland