Last month’s “Global Nature Index” reported worldwide research contributions by region. With 57,501 papers from 2014 in the “Index,” North America, North and West Europe, and East and Southeast Asia accounted for 91% of the total whole fractional count (WFC) of articles, at 19,425, 15,785 and 11,464, respectively. These regions accounted for most of the total WFCs in each discipline: life science, chemistry, physical science, and earth and environmental science. WFC considers the regional affiliation of each author of a paper and the disproportionate number of astrophysics articles. Global WFC was split roughly evenly across life science, chemistry and physical science, but earth and environmental science articles accounted for less than 10%. The region with the largest share of total WFC in life, and earth and environmental sciences was North America. East and Southeast Asia, and North and West Europe had the highest WFCs in chemistry and physical sciences, respectively.

Source: Nature Index