The numbers of papers in physics, chemistry, engineering and medicine are surveyed by searching prominent abstracting databases : INSPEC, CA, COMPENDEX and EMBASE, during the period of 1976-1993. Statistics are obtained by seven countries, e. g. Japan and USA, in 27 scientific fields. It is revealed that Japan has become the second biggest country after USA in terms of the number of papers. Discounting the figures by sizes of the nations, i. e. population, gives another view that Japan is bigger than USA in chemistry while it is quite weak in the other fields. The paper summarizes the results, suggesting viewpoints for further analysis, and refers to the measures of improving the situation.
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