Statistics released by the National Science Council (NSC) last week showed that Taiwan was ranked No. 18 globally in terms of the number of published journal articles listed in the Science Citation Index (SCI), a ranking the country has managed to maintain since 2003.
The total number of listed articles increased slightly from 12,393 in 2004 to 15,661 in 2005.
Taiwan, however, is currently trailing behind other Asian countries in this respect, including Japan, China, India and South Korea.
The Science Citation Index was originally developed by the Institute for Scientific Information in the US, which is currently run by Thomas Scientific.
The index, which is also available online, identifies which articles are cited most frequently. It is also used to gauge how advanced a country is in regards to research and development in science and technology.
The council's annual statistics also indicated that the number of Taiwanese engineering-related journal articles listed in the Engineering Index (EI) had jumped from 10,980 in 2004 to 11,661 in 2005.
Meanwhile, the number of Taiwanese copyright applications approved in the US reached 5,118 in 2005, down from 5,928.
Taiwan has made no progress in terms of global ranking in either category.
It is ranked No. 11 in the Engineering Index and No.4 in successful copyright applications. Some are concerned that Taiwan's performance should be much better.
In a study released by Thomas Scientific in 2004, Taiwan was on average ranked No. 21 in terms of journal articles listed in SCI between 1993 and 2003.
However, it was ranked No. 96 in terms of the average number of times each article was quoted by other researchers around the world.
When examining the relative impact of each SCI-listed paper, Taiwan was ranked below the global average in every scientific field, including computer sciences, neurosciences, botany, zoology, biology, and agricultural sciences.
The only significant progress was seen in the field of mathematics, in which Taiwan advanced from 32 points below the global average to four points below.
In response to the council's statistics, some attributed Taiwan's apparently lackluster performance to the fact that the council had analyzed the quantity rather than the quality of research.
Others, however, said that the low rankings were the result of education reforms that they felt had lowered the quality of higher education in Taiwan and affected research.
Fast food chain McDonald's is to raise prices by up to NT$5 on some products at its restaurants across Taiwan, starting on Wednesday next week, the company announced today. The prices of all extra value meals and sharing boxes are to increase by NT$5, while breakfast combos and creamy corn soup would go up by NT$3, the company said in a statement. The price of the main items of those meals, if ordered individually, would remain the same. Meanwhile, the price of a medium-sized lemon iced tea and hot cappuccino would rise by NT$3, extra dipping sauces for chicken nuggets would go up
Yangmingshan National Park’s Qingtiangang (擎天崗) nature area has gone viral after a park livestream camera observed a couple in the throes of intimate congress, which was broadcast live on YouTube, drawing large late-night crowds and sparking a backlash over noise, bright lights and disruption to wildlife habitat. The area’s livestream footage appeared to show a couple engaging in sexual activity on a picnic table in the park on Friday last week, with the uncensored footage streamed publicly online. The footage quickly spread across social media, prompting a tide of visitors to travel to the site to “check in” and recreate the
Minister of Digital Affairs Lin Yi-ching (林宜敬) yesterday cited regulatory issues and national security concerns as an expert said that Taiwan is among the few Asian regions without Starlink. Lin made the remarks on Facebook after funP Innovation Group chief executive officer Nathan Chiu (邱繼弘) on Friday said Taiwan and four other countries in Asia — China, North Korea, Afghanistan and Syria — have no access to Starlink. Starlink has become available in 166 countries worldwide, including Ukraine, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, in the six years since it became commercial, he said. While China and North Korea block Starlink, Syria is not
GROUNDED: A KMT lawmaker proposed eliminating drone development programs and freezing funding for counterdrone systems, despite China’s adoption of the technology China has deployed attack drones at air bases near the Taiwan Strait in a strategy aimed at overwhelming Taiwan’s air defense systems through saturation attacks, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said. The council’s latest quarterly report on China said that satellite imagery and open-source intelligence indicate that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had converted retired J-6 fighter jets into J-6W drones, which the PLA has stationed at six air bases near Taiwan, five in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province. The report cited J. Michael Dahm, a senior fellow at the US-based Mitchell Institute, as saying that China has
RSS