Abstract
A research evaluation of the leading research universities globally using the curated bibliometric data from Shanghai Rankings Global Ranking of Academic Subjects 2018 shows Hong Kong at the top position. A X/GDP productivity criteria is used where each country’s scientific wealth is represented by X, a second-order bibliometric indicator, and its nominal Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is taken as a measure of its economic wealth. Singapore appears at the fifth position. This brief communication looks at the anatomy of this exceptional performance of the two city states, which are similar in many ways and yet dissimilar in many other ways. Hong Kong has the slight edge over Singapore in translating economic wealth to scientific wealth.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Juradja, S., Kozubek, S., Munich, D., & Skoda, S. (2017). Scientific publication performance in post-communist countries: Still lagging far behind. Scientometrics, 112(1), 315–328. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2389-8.
King, D. A. (2004). The scientific impact of nations. Nature, 430(6997), 311–316.
May, R. M. (1997). The scientific wealth of nations. Science, 275(5301), 793–796.
Prathap, G. (2018). Eugene Garfield: From the metrics of science to the science of metrics. Scientometrics, 114(2), 637–650.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Prathap, G. A bibliometric tale of two cities: Hong Kong and Singapore. Scientometrics 117, 2169–2175 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2927-z
Received:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2927-z
Keywords
- Bibliometrics
- National comparison
- Shanghai Rankings
- Hong Kong
- Singapore
- Second-order indicators
- Gross Domestic Product (GDP)