An academic appraisal report released Wednesday said Chinese scientists lag behind their counterparts in developed countries with regard to the innovativeness of their research papers, which leads to a low frequency of citation.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) sponsored the appraisal of world science development trends and China's influence in science.

Xiao Xiantao, a senior researcher who oversees the project, said in an interview with Xinhua that Chinese scientists performed well in mathematics, material science, chemistry and engineering, while having little influence in agricultural science and life science.

According to the Essential Sciences Indicators (ESI) released by the US Institute for Scientific Information, 253,566 research papers were published by Chinese scientists from 1993 to 2003, ninth most in the world and 2.63 percent of the world total. The Chinese papers were cited 735,288 times by world publications, 18th most in the world. China also produced 944 of world's top one percent of research papers, ranking 17th.

Among all the global research powers, the United States, which produced 2,799,593 research papers in the ten-year period, was first and followed by the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany and France.

The Chinese papers on material science rose by the largest proportion compared with papers in other fields. Papers on clinical medicine, molecular biology, genetics, neurology and behavioral science, immunology, psychology and agricultural science were much less frequent.

According to the report, most of the world's top 15 research powers were those holding the most technological patents. China's share in world patents is much smaller than its share in research papers.

Cao Xiaoye, CAS chief policy designer, said Chinese scientists need to keep cool head in sharpening their edges in scientific innovation.

"We achieved so much in the past decades," Cao said, "but we are still not a global power in scientific research."

(Xinhua News Agency April 7, 2005)