The growing concentration of national influence in global science

Scientific influence, or the capacity of ideas and concepts to shape future research, is crucial to developing and disseminating knowledge and sustained innovation. Here, using nearly 240 million scientific works published between 1990 and 2023 from OpenAlex to construct international networks of influence, discursive influence, which represents what global scientific communities consider important and worthy of investigation, is shown to be disproportionately and increasingly concentrated in a small group of resource-wealthy countries, including the United States, Canada, Western Europe and East Asia, in comparison to attributional influence. This concentration raises issues of equity and innovation in global scientific discourse, perhaps narrowing research perspectives, exacerbating biases and creating echo chambers that are associated with stifling innovation and marginalizing contributions from countries that are peripheral to global scientific discourse. The findings underscore the need to promote diverse and inclusive global research enterprises.