{"id":290997,"date":"2026-07-09T06:59:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T06:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clarivate.com\/academia-government\/?p=290997"},"modified":"2026-07-09T06:59:29","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T06:59:29","slug":"understanding-the-impact-of-g20-rd-investment-beyond-academia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clarivate.com\/academia-government\/blog\/understanding-the-impact-of-g20-rd-investment-beyond-academia\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding the impact of G20 R&D investment beyond academia"},"content":{"rendered":"

How can we measure whether research investment delivers impact beyond academia? Drawing on the G20 research and innovation scorecard 2026, this blog explores how non-academic collaboration and citations provide insight into where research is applied and used outside academic settings.<\/em><\/p>\n

Research & development (R&D) investment across the G20 is vast. The United States and Mainland China each invest more than $1 trillion in R&D, while the European Union contributes more than $600 billion*. South Korea typically devotes around 5% of GDP to R&D, and economies such as the U.S., Japan, and Germany all exceed 3%.<\/p>\n

This makes the questions of return, relevance, and accountability increasingly important. How do we know whether research investment is delivering real-world impact? Publication output and citation impact remain essential measures of research strength, but they do not show whether knowledge is being used outside academia.<\/p>\n

If research is meant to support better health, cutting-edge technology or more inclusive growth, we also need indicators that show whether knowledge is being transferred beyond universities and research institutes to drive improvements in other sectors.<\/p>\n

The annual G20 research and innovation scorecard<\/a> from the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) at Clarivate provides a comparative view of the research and innovation capabilities of the 21 G20 members**. The 2026 edition highlights productivity, citation impact, collaboration, open access, and disciplinary strengths. Through its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) section, it also offers insight into how knowledge is transferred and applied beyond academia. By examining the research footprint of members and signals of broader societal impact, the scorecard begins to address key questions around the return on research investment and its wider relevance.<\/p>\n

Non-academic collaboration and citations as indicators of real-world impact<\/h3>\n

In the scorecard\u2019s SDG analysis, the non-academic collaboration indicator is based on publications co-authored by academic and non-academic contributors, while the non-academic citations indicator tracks publications cited in the scholarly literature at least twice by non-academic researchers. For our purposes, \u2018non-academic\u2019 includes the industrial sector, hospitals and charities.<\/p>\n

Together, these indicators offer a useful view of impact beyond academia<\/a>. They provide examples of external uptake and early signals of real-world impact, adding a broader perspective on research influence.<\/p>\n

Real-world research impact is concentrated among a small group of G20 countries<\/h3>\n

These key indicators show that a small group of advanced economies, most of which rate above average for academic citation impact generally, performs above the G20 average across most or all SDGs. Germany, the U.S., the United Kingdom, France, Canada and Australia all show above-average share of publications with non-academic citations across every SDG, and most also perform strongly on non-academic collaboration.<\/p>\n

By contrast, several members, including Russia, Mexico, Indonesia and T\u00fcrkiye, are below the G20 benchmark on non-academic citations across all SDGs, while Russia, Mainland China, India and South Africa remain below average on non-academic collaboration throughout.<\/p>\n

Germany and Argentina stand out<\/h3>\n