Leap in researchers in developing countries

Policymakers the world over are realising the benefits of investing in science, as a new UNESCO report reveals. The number of researchers worldwide is on the rise, with developing countries witnessing an increase of 56 per cent in the five years between 2002 and 2007. In the five years between 2002 and 2007, researcher numbers increased from 5.8 million to 7.1 million, with nearly 1 million of the additional researchers in developing countries, according to a new study published by the UNESO Institute for Statistics. Unsurprisingly, China is responsible for most of the gain. While the whole of Asia saw its share of researchers increase from 35.7 to 41.4 per cent over the five years, China’s increase in researchers went from 14 per cent to 20 per cent over that same period. In real numbers, China now has a total of 1.42 million researchers, just behind the US with 1.44 million. The US saw its grasp on the percentage of researchers worldwide slip from 23.2 per cent to 20.3 per cent. Based on relative growth and decline rates, one can assume that China has well and truly overtaken the US since then. Overall, women represented 29 per cent of all researchers, although the data doesn’t reveal whether the percentage has changed in any way since 2002. Only 15 per cent of countries demonstrated gender parity, although data wasn’t available for nations such as Australia, Canada, the UK, US and China – which is likely to have distorted the figures somewhat. In Asia, the overall figure was 18 per cent of researchers were female, but that ranged from just 13 per cent in Japan and India to most of the Central Asian countries reporting gender parity. On the other hand, in Latin America and the Caribbean 46 per cent of researchers were women, with five countries – Argentina, Cuba, Brazil, Paraguay and Venezuela - reaching parity, while in Chile, Guatemala, Honduras and the US Virgin Islands women were less than 30 per of the total. Global expenditure on R&D also increased, with the percentage of global GDP expended on R&D increasing 0.03 points to 1.74 per cent in the five years to 2007. Israel led the world with 4.7 per cent of its GDP spent on R&D. The US spent 2.7 per cent of its GDP on R&D; and while Australia isn’t itemised in the UNESCO report, the region of Oceania was 2.1 per cent. India invested only 0.8 per cent of GDP in R&D in 2007. Industrialised nations in Europe, the US and Japan represented almost 70 per cent of global R&D expenditure. “Policymakers seem to realise more and more that innovation is the key for economic growth to the point of setting R&D investment targets,” said Martin Schaaper, one of the authors of the report. “China is the foremost example of a country setting a target – 2 per cent by 2010 (it was 1.5 per cent in 2007) and 2.5 per cent by 2020 – and is well on the way to reaching it.” Schaaper also noted the African science and technology consolidated plan of action, which aims for a target of 1 per cent of GDP by 2010. It was 0.4 per cent in 2007. Go towww.uis.unesco.org/template/pdf/S&amp;T/Factsheet_No2_ST_2009_EN.pdf