“Don’t move the goalposts,” warns leading scholar of science indicators, as China takes the lead on publication metrics
Cassidy Sugimoto, professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Photo credits: Layton Thompson
Cuts to US science budgets mean that China is likely to surge ahead on R&D spending this year, a scholar of science indicators has argued.
Across a range of measures, from spending to publications to migration patterns, the US is being overtaken, said Cassidy Sugimoto, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology last week at a conference in London.
“If measured by investments in R&D alone, the United States will lose scientific leadership to China this year,” she told the Metascience 2025 gathering.
China has been catching up on R&D spending for decades, but last year, figures from the US National Science Board showed that the country was holding off the challenge, due…
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