According to James Wildson, the director of science policy at the Royal Society, China’s gains in research can be attributed to three major factors; the first of which is the massive investments in research made by China’s government. This has significant impact on an industry whose primary source of capital is research grants. The second factor Wildson cited was the “organized flow of knowledge from basic science to commercial applications,” or simply put; China tends to perform research with practical application.

The third factor is that China capitalizes upon the fact that many of its citizens are dispersed throughout the world by inviting them to participate in a program which allows them to spend part of their time conducting research in China, and the other part conducting research overseas. China has also been taking advantage of the collaborative nature of research by publishing an increased amount of papers co-authored with scientists from outside countries.

Thomson Reuters brings up an important point on the quality of papers produced by China; "Although the statistics measure papers in peer-reviewed journals that pass a threshold of respectability, the quality [in China] is still rather mixed. They have some pretty good incentives to produce higher quality research in future.”

This observation on quantity over quality seems to point to China’s enormous population of 1.3 billion, 4.5 times greater than America’s. With that many more citizens it is easier to produce numbers. Hopefully in the future, the trend in quality will match the trend in productivity.

Outside of China, countries often associated with research production include Brazil, Russia, and India. While funding cuts on scientific research have things looking bleak for India and Russia, Brazil -- which specializes in agriculture and life sciences – is seeing a steep increase in papers published and may also be a scientific power to watch in the coming years.