(JW Insights) Sep 21 -- China replaced the United States in 2022 as the country with the most papers published in global influential journals specializing in nearly 180 disciplines, according to a report issued by the Ministry of Science and Technology's Institute of Scientific and Technical Information on September 20.

In 2022, there were 159 such journals covering 178 disciplines worldwide, and a total of 54,002 papers were published in those journals.

Chinese scholars contributed 16,349 papers, accounting for 30.3 percent, exceeding the US for the first time. The number of US papers published in the journals was 14,396, accounting for 26.7 percent, reported China Daily on September 20.

The country also ranked first in the world regarding the number of papers published in high-level international journals and citations of the papers.

According to the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information, the publications are representative scientific journals covering various disciplines worldwide, each ranked among the top 10 percent of journals worldwide based on their impact factors and total citations, and publishing more than 50 academic papers and review articles annually.

In 2022, there were 371 representative journals, publishing more than 340,000 papers. About 27 percent of those papers had first authors and first affiliations from China, with a total citation count of 649,600, reported China Daily.

In addition, China continues to enhance academic-international cooperation, with 159,200 internationally co-authored papers being published in 2022, an increase of 6.7 percent over 2021.

Those co-authored papers accounted for 21.6 percent of China's published papers.

Moreover, co-authored papers with Chinese authors as the first author accounted for 73.3 percent of all international co-authored papers in China. Their partners were from 173 countries and regions, with the top six being the US, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Germany, and Japan.

Alexandra Vance, CEO of the American Institute of Physics Publishing, said that through academic publishing, Chinese researchers can showcase their groundbreaking discoveries to the international scientific community, gaining recognition for their contributions and expanding their impact.

"Additionally, the international scientific community benefits from access to China's rapidly advancing research landscape, which covers an increasingly wide spectrum of disciplines, particularly in physical science," she said, according to the China Daily report.

(Li PP / Gao J)