Number of publications published in top journals

These indicators monitor scientific outcomes in the form of publications along innovation areas. The insights contained in them may help the understanding of societal challenges, contribute to the emergence of future technological or social innovations, or help to improve enabling conditions. We present the number of scientific peer-reviewed publications in the Web of Science database. Publications represent research activity in specific countries, which in turn makes entrepreneurial activities and investment more likely. Similar publication and investment patterns hint at the presence of learning networks between firms and universities. As we only track English-language publications in Web of Science indexed journals, some increases in publications may be due to the increased pressure to publish in such journals rather than to an actual increase in the productivity of a country’s researchers in the respective field. Countries that put a higher emphasis on publications in their native language may underperform according to these metrics. English-speaking countries or those where English is more dominant are likely to perform better with this metric. Be aware that due to delayed data entries in the original database the values for the last couple of years might be underestimated and could possibly increase over the next years. Have this in mind when working with data from recent years.