The impact of research publications from the BRICK (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Korea) nations is increasing. Based on an analysis of articles found in the 11,500 journals in Thomson Reuters Web of Science, and using 25 broad categories of fields from the Essential Science Indicators database, the frequency of the citation of a country’s publication was used to index its impact. The number of citations was normalized for the publication year and field and to determine the ratio to the global average, resulting in a Relative Citation Impact Index, for which the world average is equal to 1. At the beginning of the 1990s, the BRICK countries had a citation impact between one-quarter and one-half on average. Between 2002 and 2011, the average citation impact for the nations has increased to over one-half the world average. In 2011, the relative citation index was 0.74, 0.72, 0.55, 0.52 and 0.50 for South Korea, China, Russia, India and Brazil, respectively. From publications from 2007 to 2011, the fields for which the South Korea’s average impact was above the world average included materials science, chemistry, physics and geosciences. For China, they included agricultural sciences, plant and animal science, materials science, and environment and ecology. For both India and Brazil, they included physics. Russia did not have any publications with an impact above the world average.

Source: Thomson Reuters