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Contradiction between input and output of Chinese scientific research: a multidimensional analysis

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Abstract

Why does China rank first in the number of researchers and second in the total amount of R&D fund investment in the world, but lag behind other countries in the number of international patent applications and the market share of high-quality achievements? Prior researches have mostly answered this question based on a single perspective and dimension of qualitative judgment, the overall persuasion is not enough. For this reason, from the perspective of international comparison, we first use the standard data among countries in the OECD database to analyze external causes of the contradictions from macro level, innovation subject, research type and micro individual four dimensions to illustrate China’s international status and room for improvement. Then, we conduct a questionnaire survey to comprehensively analysis internal causes of the contradiction. We use a grounded theoretical approach to extract the core ideas to encode the answers to the unresolved questions at three levels. Finally, we put forward policy suggestions from the aspects of scientific research talents training, R&D fund utilization and assessment system respectively. We hope to further enrich the theoretical system of scientific and technological (S&T) innovation and provide relatively complete empirical evidence for the government, universities, enterprises and other relevant R&D subjects to make scientific decisions.

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Note: The number of international patent applications submit through the patent cooperation treaty (PCT) are not only an important symbol of industrial innovation ability, but also an important yardstick to measure the international competitiveness of enterprises

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Note: According to the formula of R&D intensity = GERD/GDP, GERD represents total domestic R&D expenditure and GDP represents gross domestic product. R&D intensity represents the proportion of total R&D expenditure in GDP. The higher the proportion, the more a country attaches importance to R&D activities

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Notes

  1. The OECD is a vast online database of statistics from the 36 member countries of the OECD, including Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, the U.K, the U.S and others. It also includes non-OECD countries such as China, Russia and Singapore. The database contains relevant statistical information about major countries in the world, such as finance, education, environment, S&T, etc. Relevant data are widely used by scholars around the world. Meanwhile, the data of International comparisons in our paper are draw from the science, technology and patents section of the OECD database. https://stats.oecd.org/.

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  1. School of Economics and Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072, Hubei, China

    Qinwei Cao

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  1. Qinwei Cao
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Cao, Q. Contradiction between input and output of Chinese scientific research: a multidimensional analysis. Scientometrics 123, 451–485 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03377-w

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