Japan fell outside the top 10 ranking of countries with the most highly cited scientific papers after being overtaken by Spain and South Korea, according to an education ministry report released on August 9.
Japan ranked 12th in the average number of papers published between 2018 and 2020, dropping two places from the previous report, which covered the years 2017 and 2019 as well as the years between 2018 and 2020.
In recent years, the number of papers produced in Japan has remained almost unchanged, but its ranking has fallen as other countries are publishing more papers, a ministry official said.
The National Institute of Science and Technology Policy, affiliated with the ministry, calculated the rankings based on the top 10 percent of the most cited scientific papers in each research field, and other factors.
In the two years between 2018 and 2020, Japan accounted for an average of 3,780 of such papers, but the figure is less than 10 percent of that for China, which ranked top in the category with an average of 46,352 papers.
Since the mid-2000s, Japan has been in a downward spiral, when it was fourth in the country's ranking. The drop is particularly sharp in the fields of basic life sciences, chemistry and physics, which Japan used to perform well.
China is boosting its research and development spending by increasing its investment in research and development.
The United States overtook the United States to become first in the top 1 percent of the most cited papers for the first time, while coming out on top in the overall number of papers published and of top 10 percent of the most cited papers list, according to the latest report.
China ranked first in the number of authors of highly cited papers, which indicates the extent of each country's contribution to leading global research. The United States came in second, Japan 12th.
Japan had 690,000 scientists and spent 17.6 trillion yen on research and development in the public and private sectors in 2020, ranking third only after the United States and China.
The figures have not been rising much compared to other countries. Research and development spending in Japanese universities has remained almost unaffected since the 2000s, while the number of Ph. Since fiscal 2006, the D. holders in Japan have fallen.