Who publishes?

We can examine the types of UK institutions that publish, or rather the types of institutions that publish articles, notes or reviews in journals included in the Science Citation Index. The SCI as analysed here represents international peer-reviewed science - the domain of academics.

• Why then do 50% of papers list the addresses of non-educational institutions?
• Why are 63% of the institutions averaging at least a paper per year hospitals or firms?
• Why are more than 1000 papers per year produced by ICI, Wellcome, SmithKline Beecham and BT?

That so much international-level, peer reviewed, scientific knowledge in the UK is produced outside the university sector, or in collaboration with institutions other than universities, suggests that universities do not have a monopoly on "academic" research. Medical institutions, industrial laboratories, research council and other government laboratories and non-profit institutes collectively seem to be as important as universities in the modern UK research system.

We tend to think that scientific papers are produced by large, well-known institutions. Participation in the science base is in fact much broader, even though the large institutions do account for most of the output. Many small scale publishers, such as local councils and police forces, are institutions not normally thought of as contributing to Britain's research output.

Note: Why the SCI represents academic research

These 3000 or so journals in the Science Citation Index were selected in the first instance because they have a high international impact. Indeed, coverage of the database has been criticised because the criteria for the inclusion of second-rank journals are inconsistent and applied fields are not well covered (European Commission 1994, 33-34). In addition, we counted only articles, notes and reviews because they are most likely to report substantial research results and be peer reviewed. Discussions, letters, editorials and meeting abstracts have been excluded. (return)