The UK has overtaken the US in terms of the quality of physics-research output, according to a new report carried out by Evidence, which is owned by information-services provider Thomson Reuters. The report, Bibliometric evaluation and international benchmarking of the UK’s physics research, states that the UK is now second to Canada when ranked on the quality of research papers, measured as the average number of times that such papers are cited.
Michael Banks, news editor of Physics World.
For a relatively small country the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (to use the full name) does rather well in the impact of science research.
You can read the full Physics World news report here.
What in the hell is “normalized citation impact” ? Lots of countries and lots of scientists do excellent work. British physicists have always been at the forefront. But this strikes me as a silly attempt to measure the imponderable.
This is nearly as dumb as the “which scientist is the smartest” debates.
@DrRocket: you can find the report at http://www.iop.org/publications/iop/2012/page_53959.html
I hope that helps.