Two separated worlds: On the preference of influence in life science and biomedical research

Abstract

We introduced a new metric, “citation enrichment”, to measure country-to-country influence using citation data. This metric evaluates the degree to which a country prefers to cite another country compared to a random citation process. We applied the citation enrichment method to over 12 million publications in the life science and biomedical fields and we have the following key findings: 1) The global scientific landscape is divided into two separated worlds where developed Western countries exhibit an overall mutual under-influence with the rest of the world; 2) Within each world, countries form clusters based on their mutual citation preferences, with these groupings strongly associated with their geographical and cultural proximity; 3) The two worlds exhibit distinct patterns of the influence balance among countries, revealing underlying mechanisms that drive influence dynamics. We have constructed a comprehensive world map of scientific influence which greatly enhances the deep understanding of the international exchange of scientific knowledge. The citation enrichment metric is developed under a well-defined statistical framework and has the potential to be extended into a versatile and powerful tool for bibliometrics and related research fields.