The US-EU race for world leadership in science and technology has become the favourite subject
of recent studies. Studies issued by the European Commission reported the increase of the European share in the
world’s scientific production and announced world leadership of the EU in scientific output at the end of the last
century. In order to be able to monitor those types of global changes, the present study is based on the 15-year
period 1991-2005. A set of bibliometric and technometric indicators is used to analyse activity and impact
patterns in science and technology output. This set comprises publication output indicators such as (1) the share
in the world total, (2) subject-based publication profiles, (3) citation-based indicators like journal- and subjectnormalised
mean citation rates, (4) international co-publications and their impact as well as (5) patent indicators
and publication-patent citation links (both directions). The evolution of national bibliometric profiles,‘ scientific
weight’ and science-technology linkage patterns are discussed as well.
The authors show, using the mirror of science and technology indicators that the triad model does no longer hold
in the 21st century. China is challenging the leading sciento-economic powers and the time is approaching when this
country will represent the world’ s second largest potential in science and technology.