Every year, the scientific community produces millions of articles in the most diverse fields, such as science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine. It gives the impression that scientists never stop discovering new things, from the simplest to the most complex.
This is not just an impression. Since 1900, the number of scientific articles has doubled every 10 to 15 years. Will discoveries really never end? What is the reason for this? Boom In recent centuries?
Development of scientific knowledge
However, this extraordinary expansion was previously considered unsustainable. An influential book published in 1963 entitled Small flag, big flag, Historian of science Derek de Sola Price launched the concept of scientometry, the information-based analysis of data relating to scientific publications.
Price predicted that the world would run out of resources and talent for research. For the author, the result will be a decline in new discoveries and potential crises for medicine, technology, and economics. The book's thesis was well received at the time.
But fortunately, Derek de Sola Price's predictions were incorrect. Instead of stagnating, science has moved forward, and now the world is witnessing an explosion in scientific production. But what is the reason for this growth?
What explains the increase in global scientific production?
At work Big Global Science: Universities, Research Collaboration and Knowledge Production Sociologists David B. Becker and Justin J. W. Powell offer some explanations for this rapid growth in scientific discoveries.
Usually, when you think about it, those who are “responsible” are events such as economic growth, wars, space races, and geopolitical competition. They have their importance, of course. But, according to the book's authors, they alone cannot explain why scientific knowledge has increased to this extent.
The premise defended by the work is that the world's scientific capacity is built on the educational aspirations of young people who begin to seek higher education. The authors explain: Over the past 125 years, increasing demand for and access to higher education has led to a global revolution in education. Now, more than two-fifths of the world's youth aged 19 to 23 are enrolled in these educational institutions.
This could have been the “engine” that drives the productive capacity of scientific research. It is estimated that today more than 38,000 universities and other institutions of higher education around the world are decisively involved in scientific discoveries in various fields.
Therefore, funding for higher education (whether in the form of student scholarships, teacher salaries, or project costs) plays an essential role in the advancement of science. In other words, education is the real engine of global scientific research: university professors contribute 80% to 90% of the discoveries published each year in millions of articles.
This is one of the reasons why defending universities goes beyond teaching, which is one of the three pillars of higher education, along with extension and research. The growth of these institutions also means an improvement in everyone's lives, through the many scientific discoveries that are made in them.
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