TOKYO, Aug. 28, 2022—Confirming that Japan is slipping behind OECD economies on many fields, a government science institute has reported that the country’s science research as measured by the number of academic papers cited by third party researches fell to 12th, falling off the global 10 for the first time since 1981 when the institute began collecting data.
The number of third-party citations of Japanese academic research documents over the three-year period through 2020 totaled 3,780, falling from 10th in the previous data tallying period to 12th and dropping below South Korea, according to the National Institute of Science Technology and Policy.
The report was quoted and reported Aug. 28, 2022 by the national broadcasting station NHK.
In terms of the number of academic papers produced by Japanese academic entities, the country fell to 5th in the latest period from 4th in the previous tallying time.
National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies researcher Hiroshi Nagano was quoted by NHK as analyzing the Japanese demotion trend was resulting from the shrinking academic researcher population in parallel with shrinking government budgets for science. ‘Only in Japan can PhDs have difficulty finding jobs,’ Nagano said.
Would the sorry condition turn around? Demographics of rapidly decreasing young populations suggest negative. The number of new born in 2021 totaled 810,000, smallest since 1899 and down 3.5 percent from 2020.
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