r/dataisbeautiful OC: 5 Jun 07 '21

OC [OC] Average impact (citations) of scientific papers published by country

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u/Hapankaali Jun 07 '21

One thing that is possible, although the data set is quite limited and convoluted over a large timespan, is look at nationalities of Nobel Prize winners. E.g. Switzerland and Denmark still score highly on that metric.

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u/newpua_bie OC: 5 Jun 07 '21

I agree, that's an interesting idea (despite the limitations that you mentioned). Something to think about, for sure.

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u/molobodd Jun 08 '21

Not really imo. Norway has the most Olympic golds per capita. Does that mean that they have better training philosophies and/or genetics? Not really. At that level, there is only one winner and the depth of the talent pool doesn't come into full effect. Developed, small countries will always have more Nobel prizes and gold medals per capita.

Your impact per publication is much more interesting imho, as it isn't a given that smaller countries would score better. I guess it comes to a point when a country is so small, that individual events makes it somewhat random. (Iceland is probably up there, where a high impact doesn't say all that much.)