

However, within the period analyzed, Shenzhen, Beijing, and Shanghai have seen the fastest growth in research output share of the top 1% of most cited publications with a CAGR of 33%, 18%, and 13 % respectively. San Francisco, Boston, and Amsterdam have the largest share of the scholarly outputs found in the top 1% of the most cited publications globally.San Francisco, Boston, Amsterdam, and Los Angeles have the highest FWCIs for their scholarly outputs with a value over 2.0, indicating a normalized citation impact twice the global average.

While Asian cities lead in terms of scholarly output volumes, their citation impact as measured by the FWCI is lagging.Beijing, New York, Shanghai, Seoul, and Tokyo were the cities producing the largest volumes of scholarly output among the comparators, while Shenzhen, Boston, and Moscow showed the fastest growth in scholarly output levels with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.4%, 17.3%, and 15%, respectively.

Traditional research hubs – Boston, San Francisco, and London – continue to be the most popular destination for researchers with high citation impact as measured by the normalized citation indicator, Field Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI) among the “inflow” population of researchers. In contrast, Beijing, Boston, and Berlin have the highest loss of research expertise as demonstrated through the highest ‘‘outflow’’ of researchers. researchers moving between locations, Paris, Shanghai, and Shenzhen have been attracting the most research expertise as demonstrated through the highest ‘‘inflow’’ of researchers. Of the 20 cities analyzed, all demonstrate increased international collaboration over the past five years, except for Moscow.

Human capital, international collaboration and mobility *Exceptions to this are the periods for researcher mobility, which covers 1996–2020. The analysis of patenting activities, which was conducted by the Center, was not updated. To reflect the latest patterns and trends, Elsevier updated all the bibliometric analysis using data from 2016–2020* and used an updated methodology for the definition of cities. This report is based on an earlier local report launched by the Center, which focused on the 2014–2018 period.
