Chinese Research Trends in Materials Science and the Korean Countermeasure

Recent rapid development of the Chinese economy based on science and technology is challenging Korean industries and economy. Since the driving force for this rapid development of China is known to be scientific technologies, the purpose of this research is to confirm the current status of Chinese scientific research in the field of "Materials Science and Engineering" and propose a strategy for competition with China. Even though there are numerous journals of "Materials Science and Engineering", the 10 most popular journals with high impact factors were selected to cover general materials, nano materials, bio materials, and electronic materials. It was found that the number of scientific papers written by Chinese scientists for the materials field in the 10 journals was slowly increasing from the year 2000 until 2005, but has been rapidly increasing since 2005. This research found that Chinese research activities in the traditional metallic materials and nano materials have tremendously increased to occupy around 30 % or more papers published in several major journals related with materials science and engineering. On the other hand, bio materials and electronic materials research has not been pursued so actively; however, very recently the number of publications in these fields is also beginning to increase. To compete with this tremendously growing Chinese scientific development, Korea should have a policy of "selection and concentration" in materials-related fields, including basic science in nano, bio, and electronic materials.