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The International Impact of U.S. Science and Engineering

June 2000

A historical view. For more than a decade following World War Two, the United States focused on a science policy to mobilize resources to serve the nation in peacetime. Even though Vannevar Bush's Science - The Endless Frontier in 1945 had emphasized the importance of foreign scientific exchange, it wasn't until John F. Kennedy was President in 1962 that the U.S. entered its first-ever bilateral agreement on science and technology with Japan. Not that the U.S. was in isolation during the years between Bush's report and Kennedy's agreement, but there were more pressing things on the nation's agenda after the world war.

Globalization expands, but U.S. still sets R&D; pace. Over the last several decades the U.S. has maintained a wide lead over the rest of the world in its research and development (R&D;) expenditures. The most recent figures say that the U.S. accounts for 43 percent of the industrial world's total R&D; expenditures.

The landscape changes. The end of the Cold War in the early 1990s signaled an even wider change in how the U.S. would approach its future. A more global view of science and technology took hold as a way to open markets and increase opportunities for economic exchange internationally. While the United States is still the dominant source in the world for R&D;, here are some trends reported by Science & Engineering Indicators 2000 that give context to a growing international playing field:

• Many countries are putting in place incentives to increase overall R&D; spending and to increase innovation;
  
  
• Industrial firms increasingly have used global research partnerships worldwide, accounting for 5,100 known multi-firm R&D; alliances involving strategic high technology activities since 1990;
  
  
• Foreign firms are making substantial R&D; investments in the U.S., to the point where foreign firms' R&D; expenditures in the U.S. are roughly equivalent to what the U.S. similarly invests abroad;
  
  
• The U.S. ranks below many major industrialized and emerging countries in the proportion of college-age population with natural science and engineering degrees;
  
  
• Germany, France and Italy have spent a larger fraction of their R&D; budgets on basic research (each at 21-22 percent) than the U.S. (17 percent), whereas Japan has spent less (12 percent);
  
  
• The U.S. has the largest number of doctoral degrees in S&E; fields, totaling almost 27,000 in 1997, but the combined doctoral degrees of Germany, France and the United Kingdom reached almost 28,000, surpassing the U.S. total;
  
  
• The number of scientific articles by authors from European and Asian countries has increased more rapidly than the number from U.S. authors. The U.S. share declined by four percent from its high point earlier in the 1990s but still accounts for about a third of all articles.
  
  
• Close to 15 percent of articles published in a group of leading world journals involved international collaboration;
  
  
• Internationally, there has been a rapid increase in the percentage of citations referring to foreign research;
  
  
• Other parts of the world are increasing their labor productivity faster than the U.S.; and
  
  
• Rising exports of high-technology products and services to expanding economies in Asia, Europe and Latin America are already apparent in U.S. trade data and should grow in years ahead.

Expansion of knowledge for global good. The U.S. university system has accelerated the diffusion of S&E; knowledge around the globe. Foreign-born scientists and engineers matriculated by U.S. universities have contributed significantly to the science, engineering and technology infrastructure in the U.S. In addition, those who return home can make contributions to science infrastructure in their own countries, in research and teaching. To the extent that these U.S. graduates can be absorbed into the R&D; labor force in their home countries, they can create new knowledge in fundamental research and for technological innovation. These contributions in turn offer new opportunities for collaborations between U.S. businesses and researchers, and their counterparts around the globe.

See also:

• Full volumes of Science and Engineering Indicators 2000
  http://www.nsf.gov/cgi-bin/getpub?nsb001
  
  
• Related news releases and backgrounders http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/press/00/pr_indicators.htm

 
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