According to the report released on January 11 by Shenzhen-based data technology company Dongbi Data, there were 36,599 world-renowned scientists in the United States in 2020, a total that decreased each year to 31,781 in 2024. During this period, America’s share in the world has declined. The global talent pool has fallen from almost 33 percent to 27 percent.
For the purposes of the study, “high-level scientific and technological talent” was defined as any researcher who has published influential articles in the world’s leading journals.
The team behind the report sampled more than 40,000 key, highly cited articles published between 2020 and 2024 in 129 leading international academic journals across various disciplines, then extracted author information and collated the data.