Trends in Medical Research Productivity Across Leading Countries

<ns5:p>Background Medicine is one of the largest and most impactful research disciplines worldwide. Evaluating both the quantity and quality of research output across countries can provide insights into research efficiency, productivity, and scientific impact. Methods Using Scival/Scopus, the research output of the top countries in medicine was analyzed for years 2000 to 2024. Both quantity and quality metrics, normalized to funds and human capita, were considered when assessing national research performance in medicine. Results The global research output in medicine increased by 2.6 folds although its share of the total global publications across all fields decreased by 6%. Considering quantities, USA has the highest number of publications, while China has the highest fold growth. Switzerland had the highest normalized values with 2,326 publications per million capita in 2024 and 432 publications per thousand researchers in 2021. Denmark performed the best with respect to Gross Domestic Product (GDP). China and Japan had the lowest number of publications per thousand researchers (74.4 and 68.3 in 2022, respectively). Recently, China, Japan, and the USA had only 0.42, 0.33, and 0.30 publication per million Gross Expenditures and Research and Development (GERD) in 2022, respectively. Considering quality, Netherlands consistently has publications in top percentile journals. All countries, expect China, Japan, and Spain had at least a third of their publications in top 10 percentile journals. China had the highest percent publications in Q4. Finally, when the quality measures of publications (citations, citations per publication, and FWCI) were normalized to country or research metrics, the best performers were Switzerland and Denmark, while China, the USA, and Japan showed the lowest values. Conclusions While the USA and China lead in publication volume, smaller countries such as Switzerland and Denmark demonstrate superior research efficiency and impact when outputs are normalized to population, number of researchers, GDP, and research expenditure.</ns5:p>