A Quantitative Analysis on "Overseas Drain Ratios" of Japanese Papers and the "Internationalization" of Academic Societies: Their Implications and the Rate of Self-Sufficiency in Scientific Research

Abstract

The author has made bibliometric analyses on the Thomson Reuters' citation index databases to investigate how many and where the Japanese papers have been published for the last 16 years, with an intension to improve Japanese dispatching capability of our research outcomes. The results show that in around year 2000, over 80% of Japanese papers were published on overseas journals, but the figure has recently become slightly lowered to 79%. Though the situation seems to have settled down, there was found a tremendous growth in number of papers from abroad, which now occupy more than 32% of papers in Japanese journals, whereas the number of Japanese papers is stable. The author shall here raise basic issues in internationalization of academic societies and self-sufficiency of scientific research.