Comparison of postdocs between China and the United States: evalution on the development of medical postdocs in China

Abstract

The United States and China have different disciplinary structure and R&D investment and post-doctoral funding systems. Postdocs play an important role in scientific research output. In order to understand the development status of post-doctoral development in China and the United States, especially the problems in post-doctoral training, this study compares the number of postdocs, R&D expenditure, quality and quality of research papers, and post-doctoral disciplinary structure between China and the United States to analyzes. The study found that the American R&D investment in the past 20 years and its ratio to GDP has stabilized, and the number of papers published in high-quality journals represented by Nature and Science has also stabilized, while both of them in China is still in a period of rapid growth. American medical postdocs who mainly study in clinical medicine account for 10.9%(1 980/18 244) of the total number of postdocs, while the proportion of Chinese medical postdocs is about 29.3%(18 975/64 712), mainly in clinical medicine. In this article, the insufficient of funding and quality of innovation training were discussed during the post-doctoral training process in China. In order to promote the development of medical postdocs, it was suggeste to improve medical postdoctoral funding and research environment and to optimize the layout of postdoctoral disciplines for promoting the development of China human resources in research emerging. Key words: Medical postdoc; China; United States; Training; Thinking