UNESCO Institute of Statistics Bulletin on Science and Technology Statistics

One of the more important functions of UNESCO is the collection of international educational, scientific and cultural statistics. Without the United Nations agencies, it seems very unlikely that the international norms and standards for such statistics would be followed, nor that statistics could be compared from country to country. As the discussion below indicates, it is important to the United States to know how the nation stands in comparison with others in science and technology.

"A Decade of Investment in Research and Development (R&D): 1990-2000", UIS Bulletin on Science and Technology Statistics Issue No. 1, April 2004.

This issue of the new UIS Bulletin on Science and Technology Statistics, published in collaboration with Quebec’s Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS), analyses Research and Development (R&D) expenditure worldwide over the last decade of the 20th Century. It presents figures and trends for the various world regions, including both developed and developing countries.

Over the period from 1990-2000, world expenditure on R&D almost doubled, from US$ 410 billion to US$ 755 billion in current purchasing power parities (PPPs). At the end of the century, 80% of expenditure came from OECD countries. Throughout the decade, North America has been the leading spender on R&D. Asia follows behind North America and invests 30.5% of world R&D expenditure. Countries in the Asian region more than doubled their R&D investments from 1990-2000. Europe has the third highest level of R&D investment.


"What do bibliometric indicators tell us about world scientific output?", UIS Bulletin on Science and Technology Statistics Issue No. 2, September 2005.

This issue of the UIS Bulletin on Science and Technology Statistics, published in collaboration with the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS) (Montréal, Canada), presents a bibliometric analysis of 20 years of world scientific production (1981-2000), as reflected by the publications indexed in the Science Citation Index (SCI), with a particular emphasis on developing countries.

North America lost the lead to Europe in scientific publications per year in 1996. Japan, Europe and North America together represented 81 percent of S&T publications in 2000, up from 72 percent in 1981. Developing countries saw a steady increase in their share of scientific production from 7.5% of world papers in 1981 to 17.1% in 2000.