The Research Growth Rate (2019-2020) of Forty Countries in the Field of Earth and Planetary Science Research

Abstract

The project is designed to explore the research output of the world’s top forty countries in the field of Earth and Planetary Sciences from 2010 to 2020. The data in the field of earth and planetary sciences for each country was retrieved from Scopus. Based on the number of publications (in 2020), the top three most productive countries are China (n = 39236), United States (n = 27889), and United Kingdom (n = 10784). However, based on the growth rate (for 2019-2020), the top three countries are Pakistan (n = 38.86), Indonesia (n = 31.36), and Finland (n = 22.00). In 2013-14 and 2010-11, Pakistan was in the 3rd position. While for the years (2015-2018) Pakistan occupied the 2nd position. This motivated us to decode the research productivity of Pakistan since independence (1947). The total number of publications was found to be 4972, where 8814 authors and 10445 institutes significantly contributed. The University of Peshawar was the most productive university with 584 publications. Pakistan produced 90.50 % (n = 4500) publications in the 21st century (after 2000). The astonishing growth could be attributed to several reasons, for example, the establishment of the Higher Education Commission (HEC), Islamabad, Pakistan, an increase in total expenditure on higher education, an increase in international collaboration, etc. At the same time (in 2020), Pakistan has a meagre global share of only 0.178 % (total global production is 2,790,854). This confirms that significant measures are needed to increase the overall productivity (both the number and quality of research publication.