a small country in a world of big science a preliminary bibliometric study of science in singapore

Scientometrics, Vol. 8. Nos 5 - 6 (1985) 301-313

A SMALL COUNTRY IN A WORLD OF BIG SCIENCE" A PRELIMINARY BIBLIOMETRIC

STUDY OF SCIENCE IN SINGAPORE

S. ARUNACHALAM,* K.C. GARG**

*Publications and Information Directorate, CSIR, Hillside Road, New Delhi 110012 (India)

**National Institute o f Science, Technology and Development Studies Hillside Road, New Delhi 110012 (India)

(Received September 12, 1984 in revised form February 21, 1985)

An analysis of 258 papers published from Singapore and covered in Science Citation lndex (SC1) 1979 and 1980 indicates that (1) much of R&D in Singapore pertains to medical research, (2) almost all the papers are published in English language periodicals published from the western world, (3) nearly two-thirds of Singapore's publication output is accounted for by the University of Singapore, and (4) by and large papers from Singapore are rarely cited, even if many of them have appeared in journals having impact factor greater than one.

Introduction

Well over 90% of the world's scientific output in the form of research papers comes

from a few advanced countries o f the OECD and Eastern Europe. 1 However, many

countries o f the Third World have realized the importance o f science and technology

and are making conscious efforts towards establishing productive scientific enterprises.

The nature o f scientific enterprise - its planning, funding, thrust areas, etc. -

differs from country to country, largely depending upon size and national priorities.

Much o f the literature on the productivity o f scientific enterprise o f different nations

is on science in the developed world. Very little attention has been paid so far to

assess the scientific output and its impact on national economies o f scientifically

middle level and peripheral countries. Notable exceptions are the works o f Davidson

Frame, 2 Arunachalam and Musoke, a Garfield,4 Rabkin and lnhaber, s and Braun

and coworkers. 6~7

It is with this background we wanted to examine how small countries fared in a

w o r d of big science. For example, in an earlier study, it was found that physics research in Isfael is an integral part of mainstream w o r d physics, a

*Author to whom correspondence may be addressed.

Scientometrics 8 (1985) Elsevier, Amsterdam-Oxford-New York Akaddmiai K iad6, Budapest

S. ARUNACHALAM, K. C. GARG: SCIENCE IN SINGAPORE

We wanted to examine how the five ASEAN countries - economically advanced

and having very close links with the Western World - performed in science. In this

prel iminary paper, we report our results on Singapore.

The Republic o f Singapore, which became a sovereign state in 1965 after 150 years

o f British dominance, is virtually a city state with a total land area of 617.8 km 2

and a populat ion o f about 2.47 mill ion (in 1982). Her gross domestic product (GDP)

during the first half of 1980 grew by 10.7 per cent on an annual basis and the per

capita gross national product (GNP) during 1980 was US $6515. This growth in

economy is largely due to expansion in exports of goods and services and the

increase in private sector manufacturing investments. The other socio-economic

Table 1 Social and economic indicators of Singapore

Area, km 2 617.8 Population mid-1982 (millions) 2.47 Life expectancy at birth (1981). years 72 Gross domestic product (1981), million US $ 12 910 Per capita GNP (1982), US $ 5 910 Annual growth rate (1960-82), % 7.4 Adult literacy, (1980), % 83 No. of TV sets per thousand people 168 Total No of newspapers (in 4 languages) 11 Number of newspapers sold daily per thousand people (1981) 261 No. of telephones per thousand people (lq81) 313 No of cars per thousand people (1981) 65 No. of scooters/motor-bicycles per thousand people (1981) 52 6-11 years old in primary schools, % 107 12-19 years old in secondary schools, % 55 20-24 years old in higher education, % 8 No. of doctors per thousand people (1980) 0.87 Per capita energy consumption, kg oil equivalent (1980) 4 492 Percentage of population between 15 and 64 years (1982), % 66 Percentage of labor force in agriculture (1980), % 2 Percentage of labor force in industry (1980), % 39 Percentage of labor force in services (1980), % 59 Unemployment rate (% of total labor) 2.9 Total No. of potential scientists-engineers/technicians 12 610 S&T personnel actually deployed in R&D (1977) per million population 5 460 No. of publishing scientists (1981, data from ISI, Philadelphia) 190 Per capita expenditure on R&D per annum (1977, US $) 2.4

Sources 1. World Development Report, 1984, World Bank and Oxford University Press. 2. Statesman Yearbook, 1983-84. 3. Encyclopedia of the Third World, edited by Kurien. 13

302 Scientometrics 8 (1985)


indicators (Table 1) like high life expectancy at birth, high adult literacy rate, high investment in education, research and development and health, and high percentage of the labour force in the service sector clearly make Singapore a developed society.

Methodology

This assessment of science in Singapore is entirely based on publication and citation data, and is similar to the study of Arunachalam and Musoke on science in Africa. 3 We collected data on publications from the corporate author index of the Science O'tation Index {SC1), 1979 and 1980. Unfortunately, several entries in this listing of SCI are shown more than once. However, we have taken care to include such entries only once. For each one of these papers originating from Singapore, we identified the papers citing it in subsequent years by scanning the citation index section of the SCI, 1979-1982. Our data consist of two parts: (1) a list of papers from Singapore, covered by SCI 1979 and 1980, each one of them carrying the name of the first author, institutional address and the journal where it was published; and (2) citations in the literature to each one of these papers in the four-year period 1979-1982.

The data were used to identify the distribution of the publications according to journals used, subject, and the institutions from where they came. We also identified highly cited papers and prolific authors.

Analysis

There were 136 papers from Singapore covered by SCI 1979 and 122 by SCI

1980. From the titles of the journals where they were published, we classified these papers into six groups (Table 2). Medical science predominates with almost 50% of the papers being in medical and related journals. The emphasis on other areas, viz. mathematical, physical, chemical and biological sciences and engineering is about equal. This is not at all surprising, according to Chan Tao Soon, 9 President of the Nanyang Technological Institute, for the Medical Faculty is the most established faculty with a history of over 150 years whereas the other faculties have a history of between 15 and 40 years.

The University of Singapore dominated the scientific enterprise of the Republic, accounting for 76% of the Republic's scientific publications (Table 3). The Nanyang University published 22 papers and other institutions were responsible for 40 papers. In 1980, however, the two universities were merged to form the National University

Scientometrics 8 H985) 303


Table 2 Subjectwise distribution of papers as seen

from titles of the journals (Data from SCI, 1979 and 1980)

Year No. Field Total

1979 1980

1 Medical Sciences 72 53 125 2 Engineering Sciences 11 18 29 3 Physical Sciences 9 16 25 4 Mathematical Sciences 11 11 22 5 Biological Sciences 14 4 18 6 Chemical Sciences 5 13 18 7 Others 14 7 21

Grand total 136 122 258

Table 3 Institutionwise distribution of

Singapore research papers

SCI Year No. Total

1979 1980

A. University of Singapore* 1 Faculty of Medicine 27 24 51 2 Singapore General Hospital 26 8 34 3 Departments of Engineering 11 18 29 4 Kandang Karbau Hospital 11 10 21 5 Department of Mathematics 6 10 16 6 Department of Chemistry 3 7 10 7 Department of Biochemistry 5 2 7 8 Department of Botany 6 1 7 9 Department of Zoology 3 1 4

10 Others 10 12 22 B. Nanyang University*

1 Department of Physics 7 3 10 2 Department of Mathematics 4 1 5 3 Department of Chemistry 2 3 5 4 Others 1 1 2

C. Other Institutions 14 21 35


*A and B are now merged into the National University of Singapore.

3 0 4 Scientometrics 8 (1985)


of Singapore. Among the 196 papers from the University of Singapore 106 were either from the Faculty of Medicine or the hospitals attached. All the 29 papers in engineering came from the departments of engineering of this university.

Journal use

Singapore is too small a nation to be able to sustain many national scientific journals. However, there are a few national journals published from Singapore, e.g., Singapore Journal of Obstetrics and Gynacology; Singapore Journal of Primary Industries; Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography; Annals of the Academy of Medicine, Singapore; and Bulletin of the Physical Society of Singapore, none of which like many other Third World journals, is covered in SCI. All the work done in Singapore and covered by SCI is published in foreign journals, most of them from the USA, UK and

the Netherlands. Nineteen journals in which Singapore scientists published at least theree papers in the two years 1979-1980 account for 75 of the 258 articles (Table 4). One hundred and nineteen papers were published in journals which had an impact factor of one or more as seen from JCR 1979.1 o Forty-four of these papers were published in journals having an impact factor of two or more, 21 in journals of impact factors three or more and five in journals of impact factor greater than five. Many of these high impact journals are in the areas of medicine (clinical, surgery, etc.) and in life sciences closely related to medical research, both put together accounting for 85 articles. Twenty-three papers in physics, 10 papers in chemistry and six papers in botany also appeared in journals of impact factor greater than one. Almost all Singapore papers are published in English and there appears to be no particular preference for commercial or society journals (Table 5).

CTtedness of Singapore papers

The 258 papers in our sample have in all been cited 383 times in the period of 1979-82. One-hundred and thirty of these papers were not cited even once. At the other extreme, at least six papers have been cited more than 10 times and 22 papers have won 5 citations or more (Table 6). Nearly one-fourth of the citations are self- citations (tin first author basis).

That the citation record of science performed in Singapore is poor becomes obvious if we compare it with the citation record of a few other nations. We present in Table 7 data on the 100 Singapore papers covered in SCI 1978 as well as the 5-year (1978-82) citation impact of papers published by several other countries in

Scientometrics 8 (1985) 305


Table 4 Journalwise distribution of Singapore research papers

SCI year No. Title of the journal Total Impact factor*

1979 1980 (JCR 1979)

1 J. Anat (GBR) 4 3 7 1.209 2 Electron. Lett. (GBR) 2 4 6 0.927 3 J. Ferrocem (THL) 2 4 6 4 Phys. Rev. D. (USA) 4 1 5 2.548 5 Aust. N.Z.J. Med. (AUS) 1 3 4 0.774 6 Br. J. Vener. Dis. (GBR) 2 2 4 1.521 7 Br. Med. J. (GBR) 3 1 4 3.069 8 Discrete Math. (NLD) 3 1 4 0.252 9 lnt. J. Mech. Sci. (GBR) 2 2 4 0.354

10 Tissue Antigens (DNK) 3 1 4 2.109 11 Astrophys. J. (USA) - 3 3 4.136 12 Astrophys&Space Sci (NLD) - 3 3 0.826 13 Aust. Paediatr. J. (AUS) 1 2 3 0.356 14 Can. Z Chem. (CAN) 1 2 3 1.477 15 Clin. Endocrinol. (USA) 2 1 3 2.277 16 Contraception (USA) 1 2 3 1.25 3 17 Lancet (GBR) 3 - 3 8.518 18 Med. J. Aust. (AUS) 3 - 3 0.907 19 Thermochim. Acta (NLD) 1 2 3 0.675 20 Journals contributing

2 paperseach 10X2=20 8• 36 21 Journals contributing

1 paper each 67 60 127 22 Book articles and

conference papers 11 9 20


*The 1979 impact factor of journal X is calculated by dividing the number of all the SCI source journals' 19.79 citations of artictes journal X published in 1977 and 1978 by the total number of source items published in 1977 and 1978.

1978. Singapore's ASEAN neighbours, Malaysia and Phillipines, have a better citation

rating as does Kenya, let alone the advanced countries of the world. From Table 7,

it is also clear that papers by Singapore authors published in UK and US journals

have a better citation record than those published elsewhere.

It is of interest to know how quickly the papers published by Singapore scientists

get cited in the international literature. Ten papers published in 1977 and 13 papers

published in 1980 won a citation m the year of publication itself. At least 95 papers

won their first citation within two years of their appearance in print (Table 8).



Table 5 Distribution of Singapore research papers according

to journal country and publisher type (Data from SC1 1979 and 1980)

No. Journal country Society

Commercial and University

Total

1 United States of America (USA) 38 48 2 Great Britain (GBR) 29 47 3 The Netherlands (NLD) 21 - 4 Australia (AUS) 7 6 5 Switzerland (SWZ) 6 1 6 Denmark (DNK) 6 - 7 Thailand (THL) - 6 8 Canada (CAN) - 4 9 Others 7 12

10 Books - -

Grand total 114 124

86 76 21 13 7 6 6 4

19 20

258

Prolific authors

Ten scientists have contributed at least four papers in the two years (1979-1980)

who among them have contributed 55 papers. At least six o f these prolific authors

are medical researchers. An astronomer has contributed six papers and a physicist has

published four papers (Table 9). Six papers had won more than 10 citations in the

four-year period. Significantly all of them are from the University o f Singapore and all o f them are in medical journals (Table 10).

Discussion

From the data that we have, it is evident that the strong point of Singapore's

R&D efforts is its medical research. In fact, Singapore produces an unusually large

percentage o f medical graduates. For example, out o f the 2316 graduates of 1976

there were 188 doctors and 248 engineers. The figure for natural sciences is a

relatively low 294. In 1982-83 , there were 827 students enrolled in medicine at the

National University o f Singapore and 2120 in engineering, a 1 Medical graduates o f

Singapore a/so appear to be in great demand elsewhere. According to prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, ~2 more than 1100 doctors have left the country between 1973 and

Scientometries 8 (1985) 307


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Table 7 Five-year (1978-82) citation impact of papers from

Singapore covered in SC1 1978, compared with the citation impact of other selected countries*

First author from Singapore Five year

Journal 1978 SC1 citation impact country item (1978-82)

U.S.A. 39 2.256 U.K. 27 2,925 Australia 9 1.000 Switzerland 6 0.500 Denmark 4 4.000 Netherlands 3 1.333 East Germany 3 0.000

Total 100 2.000

Cited author country

Australia 7 538 4.400 Canada 16 054 4.878 Israel 3 801 4.937 Japan 20 810 4.028 Kenya 173 3.236 Malaysia 147 2.979 Norway 1 790 5.449 Phillipines 60 2.750 Sweden 5 464 6.984 U.K. 34 926 5.21 U.S.A. 171 231 5.69 World 388 276 4.782

*Data obtained from SCI computer files (courtesy Philadelphia).

Table 8 How quickly are Singapore papers cited?

Type of data Year

1979 1980

ISI.

Total

No. of papers not cited No. of papers cited for the first time in the

in the year of publication After 1 year of publication After 2 years of publication After 3 years of publication

Grand total

63 67 130

10 13 23 27 19 46 26 23 49 10 - 10

136 122 258

Sclentometrics 8 H985) 309 3


Table 9 Prolific authors of Singapore

Total no. of No. Name No. of papers citations Subject

1 Chart S.H. 11 45 Medicine 2 Ling E.A. 7 40 Medicine 3 Karim S.M.M. 7 22 Medicine 4 Lerche I. 6 17 Astrophysics 5 Rajan V.S. 4 13 Medicine 6 Adaikan P.G. 4 7 Medicine 7 Chew G.K. 4 6 Physics 8 Gunasegaram R. 4 6 Life Science/Medicine 9 Balendra T. 4 3 Engineering

10 Paramasivam P. 4 3 Ferroeement

*Authors with three papers = 8, authors with two papers = 38, authors with one paper = 103, and total number of authors = 159.

1983 which is more than half of the total of the 1983 population of doctors of

about 2040. In Australia alone, there were about 620 Singapore-trained doctors (in

1983), five times the annual medical graduate output of Singapore during the Seventies.12

Industrial relevance. Surprisingly, the research output of Singapore in 1979 and

1980 does not match the national industrial priorities. Singapore has recently

embarked on a second industrial revolution under which the Economic Growth Board, the Government's .investment promotion and chief economic planning organiza-

tion, has chosen 11 industries for primary targets for promotion. These include

automotive components; machine tools and machinery; medical and surgical apparatus and instruments; computers, computer peripherals and software; electronic instru-

mentation; optical instruments and equipment; precision engineering products;

advanced electronic components; and hydraulic and pneumatic control systems.

Also, Singapore is the third largest petroleum refining centre and the second largest

oil rig construction base in the world. Other major industries include ship building

and repair. The current policy of the government is to deemphasise the entrepot role and go in for rapid industrialization concentrating on high technology and high

value added industries. 13 In the agricultural sector, hog-raising, poultry farming and fishing are the thrust

areas.14

None of these areas has received even one-fourth of the attention paid to medical research as seen from the number of research papers published in different areas.



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Scientometrics 8 (1985) 311 3*


However, remedial action is already afoot. A new R&D policy was formulated in 1979. More than 300 companies have been given incentives to carry out R&D.

Manpower training is viewed as one of the keys to increased labour productivity along with increased capital investment and technological innovation. In an effort to make Singapore a brain center for high technological industries in the region, efforts are being made to capitalize on the only major source of the Reoublic, viz. its youthful population. Singapore plans to graduate more than 1200 engineers annually during the 1980s. It is expected that Singapore will soon have the highest annual supply of engineers per one million of population, is Also, to prevent the possible migration of

trained engineers, the Singapore government has already initiated a major science park which would promote both scientific research and high technology industries. The science park is geared to develop wafer-diffusion and semiconductor technology, computer hardware, software consultancy services, materials research, etc. The Soft- ware Technology Centre to be set up at the science park is expected to employ 1500-1800 persons. Already computer courses offered at the National University of Singapore and computer training institutions such as Japan-Singapore Institute of Software Technology and the Centre of Computer studies at Ngee Ann Polytechnic admit more students than the planned capacity. 16

Furthermore, the Government and the higher-education authorities in Singapore are consciously striving to improve people's attitudes towards the acceptance of modern technology and to use higher education as a bridge between western technology and Asian values. 17 In this effort, the singapore Government is even ready to invite

outstanding foreign scholars to take up faculty positions in Singapore. A major problem faced by science in Singapore is the limited opportunity Singapore

scientists get to participate in national and international peer review, particularly through reviewing manuscripts prior to publication in journals. After all, the few journals published within the country cannot provide such opportunities to the growing number of scientists. And although we do not have any data, we presume that very few Singapore scientists are being called upon to review manuscripts by international journals.

The most important question that faces Singapore science today, as we see it, is its poor citability. The Science Council of Singapore might wish to investigate the

reasons for it. One possible means of raising the quality of R&D in Singapore is to encourage

collaborative research programs with overseas scientists and laboratories. Some small nations, notably Israel, have adopted this strategy) 8 This policy will add to the visibility of Singapore scientists as well as make it easy for them to gain entry into "'invisible colleges" and raise their information accessibility.



According to Huan Tzu Hong, registrar of the National University of Singapore, the University shares the view that Singapore should encourage collaborative research programmes with foreign scientists and laboratories to raise the quality of R&D performed in Singapore (private communication, 17 January 1985). He also feels that since 1980, a great deal of effort is put into R&D in non-medical fields as well.

We are grateful to an anonymous referee for some suggestions. One of us (S. A.) was a guest of Dr Eugene GarfieM and the Institute for Scientific Information, Philadelphia, during August- November 1984, when some data presented here were collected.

References

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London, 1982. 14. G. J. TEMPLEMAN, F. J. J. SUYKERBUYK, Agriculture in Singapore: Problems of space and

productivity, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 4 (1983) 62. 15. R. M. NAKHOODA, Singapore science park. A centre for creativity, RIHED Bull 10 (1983) 14. 16. RIHED Bull, 11 (1984) 21. (Regional News). 17. V. SELVARATNAM, A catalyst for regional cooperation in higher education, The RIHED

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Development, Jerusalem), 1982.

Scientometrics 8 {1985) 313

a small country in a world of big science a preliminary bibliometric study of science in singapore

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