The study was designed to provide a comprehensive view of the chemistry research publications growth (%) of fifty (50) countries after 2000/01. Scopus; the world's largest abstract and citation database and Scifinder; the subject specific database for chemistry were primarily used for the purpose. According to the Scopus, from 2001 to March 2020 total 10,013,057 chemistry documents (majorly research articles, reviews, and conference papers) were published. From 2001-
2020, The United States secured the top position (2403235/ 24.00%) followed by China, (1929345/ 19.26%), Germany (727246/7.27), Japan (708947/7.08%) and UK (589025/ 5.88%). The highest growth rate was recorded for the year 2005 (9.17%), followed by 2011 (8.08%) and 2004 (7.52%). Furthermore, we also calculated the % growth rate of fifty (50) countries. As per growth rate calculations, the top three slots in the last nineteen (19) years are majorly occupied by Iran (11)
Pakistan (10), China (7) Malaysia (6) and Egypt (5). Emerging economies like Brazil, Mexico, Serbia, Turkey, South Africa, Romania, Mexico, Slovenia, Slovkia and Bulgaria etc… also showed significant progress in research output. For the 1st time Pakistan has topped the relative growth rate in chemistry publications for three consecutive years (for 2017-19). The growth rate for 2017-19 was found to be 18.51, 14.17 and 17.57 %, respectively. In fact, Pakistan topped the ranking in 2006 and
2013 as well. To further extend the idea, we retrieved the per year chemistry publications data of Pakistan from 1947 to 2000. Data from World Bank, Pakistan Ministry of Finance, Pakistan Education Statistics, Pakistan Research Repository, Higher Education Commission (HEC) and Pakistan Federal Ministry of Education was also acquired to possibly explain the increase in
chemistry research growth rate in Pakistan. Although the publication growth rate of Pakistan significantly improved from 2002 onwards, it still has a meager global share of 0.5 % (approximately) and highlights that concrete policy measures must be taken to improve the publication output.
Waseem Hassan, Maria Khalid and Muhammad Raza Shah