| Field rankings for France |
| Data provided by Thomson Reuters from its Essential Science Indicators, January 2000-August 2010 |
| | Field | Papers | Citations | Citations per paper | World average | % +/– |
| 1 | Agricultural sciences | 9,000 | 83,984 | 9.33 | 6.85 | +36 |
| 2 | Plant and animal sciences | 26,664 | 1,089 | 10.17 | 7.54 | +35 |
| 3 | Geosciences | 22,302 | 4,058 | 12.29 | 9.45 | +30 |
| 4 | Physics | 67,503 | 736,387 | 10.91 | 8.83 | +24 |
| 5 | Engineering | 38,185 | 216,205 | 5.66 | 4.60 | +23 |
| 6 | Materials science | 22,622 | 186,715 | 8.25 | 6.79 | +22 |
| 7 | Microbiology | 11,588 | 212,933 | 18.38 | 15.50 | +19 |
| %3D8 | Environment/ecology | 12,246 | 159,854 | 13.05 | 11.02 | +18 |
| %3D8 | Mathematics | 24,094 | 95,474 | 3.96 | 3.37 | +18 |
| 10 | Pharmacology | 7,847 | 109,419 | 13.94 | 11.95 | +17 |
| %3D11 | Astronomy/astrophysics | 14,371 | 231,148 | 16.08 | 13.97 | +15 |
| %3D11 | Chemistry | 64,095 | 804,018 | 12.54 | 10.91 | +15 |
| 13 | Molecular biology | 18,412 | 506,872 | .53 | 25.21 | +9 |
| %3D14 | Clinical medicine | 111,651 | 1,524,403 | 13.65 | 12.64 | +8 |
| %3D14 | Immunology | 8,107 | 186,692 | 23.03 | 21.41 | +8 |
| 16 | Neuroscience | 16,613 | 329,877 | 19.86 | 19.04 | +4 |
| 17 | Biochemistry | 32,994 | 562,519 | 17.05 | 16.90 | +1 |
| 18 | Computer science | 14,870 | 53,331 | 3.59 | 3.60 | – |
| 19 | Economics and business | 5,776 | 31,919 | 5.53 | 5.96 | -7 |
| 20 | Psychiatry/psychology | 5,820 | 52,942 | 9.10 | 10.90 | -17 |
| All fields | 542,293 | 6,660,630 | 12.28 | 10.57 | +16 |
The data above were extracted from the Essential Science Indicators database of Thomson Reuters. This database, currently covering the period 1 January 2000 to 31 August 2010, surveys only journal articles (original research reports and review articles) indexed by Thomson Reuters.
Articles are assigned to a field based on the journals in which they were published and the journal-to-field scheme used by Thomson Reuters. Both articles tabulated and citation counts to those articles are for the period indicated.
France ranks fifth in output, sixth in citations received and sixth in citations per paper among nations publishing 200,000 or more papers during the period measured across the science and social science fields surveyed by Essential Science Indicators.
The table above ranks fields for France by relative citation impact, that is, citations per paper for France in a field compared with the world’s citations per paper in the same field. France’s percentage above or below the world average is presented in the far right column.
France exhibits real strength, according to this measure, in agricultural sciences, plant and animal sciences, and geosciences: the country’s citation rate for these fields was about twice that of the nation as a whole. Only in economics and business, and psychiatry and psychology did the nation fail to achieve the world average in citation impact.
For more information on the Essential Science Indicators database, see: http://science.thomsonreuters.com/products/esi