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  Of the scientific papers published in major scientific journals around the world between1981and2000,Japan's share of scientific papers and citations was as shown in Figure2-3-1 .Japan's share of scientific papers in1981was fourth in the world,after the United States,the United Kingdom,and Germany.

  However,ever since Japan surpassed the United Kingdom in1992to obtain the No.2ranking,Japan has maintained its position at No.2,and has registered the fastest rate of growth among the selected countries.

  Moreover,since excellent papers tend to attract large numbers of citations in other papers,the number of citations can be viewed as one indicator of a paper's quality.A look at the number of citations of papers authored by Japanese researchers up through the year2000by year of publication reveals that Japan's share of total citations has tended to rise as the publication year becomes more recent.Nevertheless,Japan has ranked after the United States,the United Kingdom,and Ger-many in the number of citations ever since1989,and the ratio to total citations remains much lower than the share of the total number of scientific papers published (Figure2-3-1).