This month, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released its annual Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard, highlighting trends in R&D spending among the 34 countries that make up the OECD as well as China. In particular, the report emphasized the recent trends of growing investment by business, China’s increasing R&D prominence and the US’s dominance in highly cited science publications.

In 2013, total R&D expenditures by OECD countries increased 2.7% in real terms to $1.1 trillion. R&D as a percentage of GDP (R&D intensity) remained steady at 2.4%. Among countries covered in the report, South Korea had the highest R&D intensity at 4.2%, compared to 3.3% for Japan, 2.7% for the US, 2.1% for China and 1.9% for the EU. Year over year, R&D intensity grew in each region or country, except the EU. Experimental development, applied research and basic research made up 62%, 21% and 17% of OCED R&D spending in 2013.

Postrecession R&D spending by business has recovered, according to the report. However, government and higher education R&D spending have not. Having risen each year since 2011, business enterprise spending on R&D as a percentage of OECD GDP rose from 1.58% in 2012 to 1.61% in 2013. In contrast, government R&D spending as a percentage of OECD GDP has remained stagnant at 0.27% since 2011. For higher education, the figure has remained 0.43% since 2009.

Examining these percentages in three major regions, business R&D grew in the US and China in 2013 to 1.92% and 1.60%, up from 1.87% and 1.51%, respectively, but was flat in the EU at 1.20%. Government R&D declined in the US from 0.32% to 0.30% but rose in the EU from 0.24% to 0.25%, returning to its 2010 percentage. China’s government R&D continued to grow, rising from 0.32% to 0.34%. Higher education R&D was stagnant in the US, EU and China from 2012 to 2013 at 0.39%, 0.45% and 0.15%, respectively.

In 2013, business enterprises accounted for 60% of OECD R&D spending versus 20% for higher education. Current business R&D spending is concentrated among the largest companies in R&D intensive fields. In 2012, the 2,000 top R&D companies and their 500,000 subsidiaries represented 90% of business R&D expenditures.

Based on the top 10% cited publications in an index of the Scopus database of peer-reviewed papers, the number of scientific publications from OECD countries grew at an annual average of 4.1% between 2003 and 2012 to 194,105. The number from BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries increased 16.3% on average annually to 42,542. US publications grew at an average annual rate of 3.6% to 102,260. But China’s publications increased 22.5% to 37,574, a number greater than Japan, the UK and Germany.

For the top 10% of cited publications by field measured as a ratio of OECD and BRICS output, the US was the highest in all scientific fields. Great Britain was second in neuroscience, biochemistry, immune and microbiology, pharmaceuticals, environmental science, agricultural and bio sciences. China was second in chemistry, materials science and energy. Germany was second in physics and astronomy.