Since the early 1990s, Taiwan has steadily increased its output of scientific papers, particularly in the last five years, at a rate exceeding many of its fellow 'Asian Tiger" nations. This output is concentrated in specialty areas within engineering, computer science, and materials.rnFor a detailed examination of research from Taiwan, Science Watch turned to the Thomson Reuters National Science Indicators database, which tracks publication and citation figures for more than 180 nations. The graph above displays Taiwan's year-by-year output of papers (all fields) in journals indexed by Thomson Reuters between 1990 and 2008, with comparable figures for Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia.rnMore than a decade and a half has elapsed since Science Watch scrutinized the Asian Tigers, the comparatively small but economically emergent nations of the Pacific Rim (5 [6]: 1-2, June 1994). At that time, based on figures covering 1981 through 1993, Taiwan was predominant in scientific output compared to the nations mentioned above, even surpassing South Korea in 1993 by nearly 2,000 papers.
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