Development of the scientific research profile of the Netherlands
In short
- In 2020, the Netherlands are in the top 5 of reference countries with the highest citation impact score in all scientific fields.
- Over the period 2004-2020, the number of Dutch publications increases in all scientific fields.
- The share of publications relative to other countries has fallen, mainly due to the strong rise of Chinese science.
The citation impact indicates the extent to which reference is made to scientific publications. The more an article is cited, the higher its scientific impact.
This fact sheet discusses differences in citation impact and publication volume between different scientific fields. The fields of Humanities and Law have not been included because no reliable conclusions can be drawn on the basis of the data for those fields. We compare the Netherlands with 20 reference countries, over the period from 2001‑2004 (indicated by “2004”) to 2017-2020 (indicated by “2020”).
This fact sheet is based on publication and citation data from the citation index system drawn up by the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), which is based on raw data from Web of Science. The data provides an indication of developments, but does not give a complete picture of all aspects relevant to the quality and extent of Dutch science.
Research profile of the Netherlands
The figure below compares the citation impact score with an indicator of volume: the percentage of Dutch articles in the total number of articles in a given scientific field. The arrows indicate the profile for each field in 2004 and in 2020. To give a clear indication of the trend in development over that period, a straight line has been drawn between 2004 and 2020.
Note: Humanities are not included because the number of publications in the Web of Science database is too small (Van Leeuwen, 2013).
Development of citation impact score
The above graph shows a number of trends:
- The Netherlands is doing very well. The citation impact score for all fields in 2020 is well above the global average (1.0).
- The citation impact was increasing for almost all fields. The exception is Nature, where the citation impact decreases.
- The greatest development was in the fields of Agriculture and Social Sciences.
A similar picture is apparent from the proportion of publications that are among the top 10% most cited publications worldwide: all the fields score (well) above average and show an increase over the entire period or a stabilization. The exception is once again Nature, which decreases over time.
In short, the Netherlands has developed in such a way that all the scientific fields now score well above the global average.
Development in volume
As regards the relative proportion of publications, the Netherlands shows an increase in the scientific fields of Social Sciences and Health sciences and a decrease in Agricultural sciences, Natural sciences, and Engineering. The rise of China plays a major role in this decline. The proportion of Chinese publications in the fields of Agricultural sciences, Natural sciences, and Engineering increased more sharply between 2004 and 2020 than in the reference countries. As a result, the proportion of Agricultural sciences, Natural sciences, and Engineering publications is declining in a large majority of the reference countries.
When China is excluded from the reference countries, the proportion of Dutch Agricultural sciences, Natural sciences, and Engineering publications remains roughly the same: Agricultural sciences goes from 2.7% to 2.6%; Natural sciences from 2.4% to 2.7%; Engineering from 2.2% to 2.2%. In the field of Health and Social Science, the proportion of Dutch publications without China in fact rises more sharply; Health from 3.1% to 3.8%; Social Sciences from 3.2% to 4.2% of the production of the reference countries.
In the following sections, we discuss the citation impact score and the proportion of Dutch publications in greater detail by making explicit comparisons with the reference countries.
Citation impact score: comparison with reference countries
In 2020, the Netherlands was in the top 5 of reference countries with the highest citation impact score for all scientific fields. There is no other country that is in the top 5 for all scientific fields. The United Kingdom, Switzerland and Singapore are in the top-5 for four scientific fields. In the table below, the position of the Netherlands in each field is underlined. Striking points are:
- In 2020, the Netherlands had the highest citation impact score for Social Sciences of all countries.
- For Agriculture, the Netherlands ranked third, after Singapore and Ireland.
- In Health, the Netherlands ranked second in 2020, after the United Kingdom.
- In Engineering, the Netherlands ranked fifth and in Nature fourth.
Development of the position of the Netherlands
If we look at the development of the citation impact score since 2004 as compared to the reference countries, then the following trends are apparent:
- The Netherlands has developed strongly in the field of Social Sciences: in 2004 it was in 5th place and in 2020 in 1st place.
- For Agricultural sciences, the Netherlands in 4th place in 2004 and after that in 2th or 3th place.
- For Health, the Netherlands was in the top 3 over the entire period.
- For Natural sciences, the Netherlands varies between 2th and 4th place.
- For Engineering, the Netherlands varies between 3th and 5th place.
Citation impact at discipline level
As regards scientific disciplines, the Netherlands scored (well) above the global average in 2020 in almost all disciplines. There are four disciplines for which the citation impact score fell by more than 10%, all within the “STEM” fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics):
- Chemistry and chemical technology
- Electrical engineering
- Physics and material science
- Mathematics
- Instruments and instrumentation
The appendix contains the data at discipline level.
Publication output: comparison with reference countries
The graph below shows the percentage distribution of publications by country across the scientific fields in 2020, ranked by the proportion for Natural sciences and Engineering. It is immediately apparent that the Netherlands has the smallest proportion of Natural sciences and Engineering publications. It is also apparent that the Netherlands has the largest proportion of Health publications. The Netherlands also has a high proportion of publications in Social Sciences.
| Social sciences | Humanities | Health sciences | Agriculture | Engineering | Natural sciences | |
| CHN | 2,8 | 0,3 | 18 | 2,4 | 29,5 | 47 |
| KOR | 4,3 | 0,7 | 25,3 | 2,4 | 27,2 | 40,1 |
| SGP | 8,5 | 0,9 | 22,7 | 0,7 | 27,3 | 39,9 |
| FRA | 5,5 | 2,3 | 26,3 | 2,2 | 15,1 | 48,6 |
| JPN | 2,3 | 0,4 | 31,3 | 2,6 | 16,7 | 46,6 |
| DEU | 7,5 | 2 | 27,6 | 2,2 | 14,3 | 46,3 |
| AUT | 7,2 | 2 | 29,7 | 2,8 | 13,2 | 45,1 |
| ESP | 8,6 | 3,3 | 26 | 3,8 | 15 | 43,3 |
| FIN | 11,3 | 2,1 | 27,3 | 3,2 | 15,1 | 41 |
| CHE | 6,9 | 1,6 | 34,5 | 2,3 | 11,5 | 43,2 |
| ITA | 5,9 | 2 | 34,3 | 3,2 | 15,3 | 39,3 |
| SWE | 9,5 | 1,8 | 34,5 | 2,1 | 13,6 | 38,5 |
| BEL | 9,5 | 2,8 | 33,7 | 3,1 | 13,2 | 37,7 |
| CAN | 9,9 | 2,3 | 34 | 3 | 14,9 | 35,9 |
| NOR | 13,2 | 2,4 | 30,6 | 3,1 | 12,5 | 38,3 |
| UK | 12,8 | 4,1 | 31,1 | 1,8 | 13 | 37,3 |
| AUS | 12,1 | 2 | 32,7 | 3,1 | 14,8 | 35,3 |
| DNK | 8,2 | 1,6 | 37,6 | 3,2 | 12,9 | 36,5 |
| US | 10,9 | 2,7 | 35,3 | 2,4 | 12,2 | 36,4 |
| IRE | 10,6 | 3,1 | 33,9 | 4,3 | 13,8 | 34,4 |
| NLD | 12,3 | 1,9 | 39,4 | 2,1 | 10,3 | 34 |
Over the period from 2004 to 2020, the number of publications for the Netherlands increased in all scientific fields. Growth in the number of publications for Social Sciences and Health sciences was also faster in the Netherlands than the average for the reference countries.
On average, however, publications for Engineering, Agricultural sciences, and Natural sciences increased more strongly in the reference countries than in the Netherlands. The data shows the powerful influence of China. Over the period as a whole, the total number of Chinese publications increased by 900%, far more than in other countries.
If we exclude China, then the development of Dutch publications in the fields of Engineering, Agricultural sciences, and Natural sciences are close to the development of the reference countries.
| % increase in NLD publications | % increase in publication in reference countries | % increase in publication in reference countries, except China | |
| Social | 262 | 203 | 183 |
| Health | 140 | 124 | 96 |
| Engineering | 122 | 217 | 118 |
| Nature | 96 | 120 | 76 |
| Agriculture | 51 | 101 | 60 |
Publication output at discipline level
A similar picture is apparent as regards volume growth for the disciplines. Dutch publications in all the social sciences are increasing more strongly than in the reference countries. For all “(natural) sciences and technical” disciplines, except astronomy, the increase is stronger in the reference countries. Even if we exclude China, the increase in the majority of “(natural) sciences and technical” disciplines is stronger in the reference countries.
The “life sciences and health” disciplines display a mixed picture. For example, whereas the Netherlands has increased more in Health Sciences than the reference countries, those countries have increased more in the field of Fundamental medical sciences.
More information about the disciplines is provided in the appendix.
In conclusion
We see that the citation impact score has risen most strongly since 2004 in the fields of Social Sciences and Agriculture. The proportion of publications in relation to the reference countries has increased most for Social Sciences and Health.
Compared to other countries, the Netherlands published the most in the field of Health in 2020 and also in the field of Social Sciences. For Natural sciences and Engineering, the citation impact score in 2004 was already well above the global average, and has decreased slightly for Nature. The proportion of publications as compared to other countries has decreased, mainly due to the strong rise of Chinese science. If we exclude China, the Netherlands’ proportion remains roughly the same. Compared to other countries, the Netherlands published the least in 2020 in the fields of Agriculture, Natural sciences and Engineering.
It is difficult to explain the observed differences between the fields in greater detail. This is partly because it is not possible to combine data on publications with (international) figures on FTEs or expenditure because different classifications are used and because the correlation can vary greatly between the different fields.
- The data about publications and citations comes from the CWTS citation index system, which is based on raw data from Web of Science. The categories 'journal article' and 'review' were examined. It is customary for data on scientific publications to take periods of four years, in order to dampen large outliers. Each year in this fact sheet therefore covers a period of four years, for example 2020 refers to the period 2017-2020.
- The figures are normalized per area: corrected for differences in citation culture between the areas. The data is based on 'fractional counting': a publication that has multiple authors, the citations are distributed over the authors using 'fractional counting'. This is in contrast to the 'full-counting' method, in which a collaborative publication for each author is fully counted and therefore counts more heavily according to the number of authors. With fractional counting, a publication with several authors counts as much as a publication with one author (see Waltman and van Eck, 2015).
- The data is available at area level and at discipline level. The figures at the discipline level cannot be aggregated to the level of the areas.
For information on numbers of publications, we compared the Netherlands with twenty reference countries: Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, Germany, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Norway, Austria, Singapore, Spain, United Kingdom, United States, Sweden, South Korea and Switzerland. The Netherlands is often compared with these countries in the field of science. The citation impact score says something about the position of the Netherlands in relation to all countries in the world.
For an explanation of the used definitions and abbreviations we refer to the webpage Definitions for Science in Figures.
Sources
The CWTS citation index-systeem, that is based on data of Web of Science
Van Leeuwen, T.N. (2013). Bibliometric research evaluations, Web of Science and the social sciences and humanities: a problematic relationship? Bibliometrie - Praxis und Forschung, band 2 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5283/bpf.173
Waltman, L. en N.J. van Eck (2015). Field-normalized citation impact indicators and the choice of an appropriate counting method. In: Journal of Informetrics 9, blz. 872–894. Elsevier.