Is rest of the world catching up with us? Perspective from Physical Review Letters...

I had posted this on the amd blog...I am posting it here as well:

Last year I attended the annual American Physical Society conference held in Baltimore (during the week of March 13th). One of the non-technical sessions included presentations by the APS journal editors--Physical Review A/B/C/D/E and Letters---and a panel discussion related to these journals. Since many of our mechanics and materials colleagues nowadays are interested in publishing in these journals, I thought I should post a link to some of the slides (from the editors presentation) that I found interesting. Many of the slides presented at APS are in the linked pdf file that also includes additional (humorous slides!) regarding reviewer issues.

Essentially, the graphs in the presentation depict a telling trend regarding globalization of research. Until 1995, US submissions to PRL dominated with western Europe and rest of the world following (in that order). In 1995, western Europe overtook US. Since last year, the rest of the world has overtaken BOTH western Europe and US. By the "rest of the world", the editor is referring largely to China, and partly to India and eastern Europe.