Governments' investments in academic institutions shape the research landscape and drive the innovation pipeline. In this briefing the Institute for Scientific Information examines the research economy of the United States.

Executive summary

• The U.S. is the long-established global leader in research and development
• U.S. research institutions fuel innovation – they are most often cited in patents from top companies
• By engaging with scientific investments around the world, U.S. institutions add value to domestic insights
• Mainland China and other nations are growing faster from a lower baseline
• As Mainland China and the European Union scale their scientific capacity and in some areas rivals U.S. research in terms of quality, the U.S. should continue to follow its tried and tested recipe for success, otherwise risk being overtaken.

Investment and collaboration lead to innovation

Our recent analysis of The top 50 universities powering global innovation reveals that seven of the top 10 – and 30 of the top 50 – universities cited in patented inventions from the Top 100 Global Innovators are located in the United States. Each of these institutions published hundreds to thousands of high-impact academic papers, frequently referenced by leading companies and organizations in their patented inventions between 2018 and 2022. Collectively, U.S. universities are by far the largest source of research cited by inventors worldwide.

Patent indicators, particularly when citations connect them to research literature, serve as a strong source of technological and economic evidence. Our 2024 study highlights that Francis Narin, formerly of CHI Research, revealed the extent to which U.S. patent literature drew on science. His team found that 73% of the papers cited by U.S. industry patents are authored at academic, governmental, and other public institutions. They concluded that these cited U.S. papers reflect the core of modern science, heavily supported by public agencies such as the NIH and NSF.

This influence extends both domestically and internationally. For example, Johnson & Johnson, a global healthcare company headquartered in the U.S., is among the top users of university research such as from Duke University (38.9% of all patent citations to Duke's research), University of Pennsylvania (31.8%) or Harvard University (31.6%). Further analysis of the data behind our recent report shows that other major domestic consumers of U.S. research include Honeywell, Qualcomm, General Electric, Boeing, Procter & Gamble and Dow, all found to utilize the research discoveries of all 30 U.S. institutions in the published global top 50.

Roche, the $125 billion biotechnology and healthcare company that owns American corporation Genentech, accounts for more than 30% of patent citations to both Yale University and to UC San Francisco, underscoring the strategic value of these research partnerships in advancing biomedicine and healthcare innovation. 58% of the 1,843 patent citations to UC Santa Barbara came from Kyocera, a Japanese multinational ceramics and electronics manufacturer with 79,000 employees and $13.9 billion in revenue.

Pioneering innovation

The dominance of U.S. universities in powering global innovation can be attributed in part to the fact that the U.S. was a pioneer in constructing a nationwide research ecosystem transcending boundaries between higher education and research institutions, business, government and NGOs. In 1965, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson published a memorandum to "…marshal our resources and our wisdom to the fullest to assure the continuing strength and leadership of American science and to apply the information yielded by its inquiry to the problems which confront our society and our purposes in the world."

There was an early awareness that basic research in the U.S. was being translated into significant economic and societal benefits – the return on investment (RoI) for basic U.S. research was already being examined in the 1970s, providing some inspiring examples of how basic research in the U.S. has repeatedly proven its immense socioeconomic value. Foundational studies on antigens enabled blood screening for serum hepatitis, yielding annual savings of $100 million. Nobel Laureate John F. Enders's pioneering work at Yale University on virus propagation led to the development of the polio vaccine, saving an estimated $2 billion annually. In the 1970s, the U.S. invested $33 million p.a. in the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), generating a return of $3 billion annually by preventing infectious disease – a remarkable 100:1 benefit-to-cost ratio.

More recent analyses show that the $36.94 billion awarded to U.S. researchers in 2024 supported 407,782 jobs and $94.58 billion in new economic activity nationwide – or $2.56 for every $1 invested.

Strengthening connections between academia and industry

As one of the earliest and most consistent adopters of academic research into industrial innovation, the United States has fostered strong links between universities and industry. A seminal study on the impact of academic research on commercial innovation found that university-driven research made a vital and immediate contribution to 10% of all new products or processes introduced by companies and that without this research 10% of other innovations would have been greatly delayed, and 2% would have been lost.

The Institute for Scientific Information has previously highlighted numerous examples where basic research has had a direct and measurable socioeconomic impact on fields ranging from agriculture to neonatal medicine and cosmetics.

More recently, our publication and patent data reveal economic and technological impact – and our 2024 analysis highlights the impact of university research on digital health innovation to help us understand how impactful U.S. research has fueled IP advancements. In this analysis, the United States has the most documents cited by patents in each topic field, many from research-intensive universities (e.g., Stanford, MIT) but the lists also include medical centers (e.g., Mayo Clinic, Massachusetts General Hospital).

Global excellence and leadership in research

The record of U.S. research success is long, diverse and deeply embedded in both national prosperity and global innovation. While recent analyses suggest that this era of dominance may be plateauing, such findings should be interpreted in context. As the long-established global leader in research and development, the U.S. faces slower relative growth from a strong baseline compared to other nations that are scaling their scientific capacity from a much lower baseline.

For example, the United States leads the world in the number of Highly Cited Researchers, with 2,507 recognized in 2024 – representing 36.4% of the global total. This share has gradually declined from 43.3% in 2018. Mainland China holds second position again this year and has seen its share more than double over the same period – rising from 7.9% in 2018 to 20.4% in 2024, with 1,405 researchers named, reflecting its rapid rise in investment in scientific capacity.

According to World Bank data, in 2022, the U.S. spent 3.6% of its GDP on R&D, a proportion that is broadly aligned with the expenditure rates of countries/regions such as Sweden, Belgium, Germany or Japan, although behind Israel (6%) and South Korea (5.2%). In raw numbers, adjusted for purchasing power parity, U.S. expenditure on R&D was the largest in the world (over $923 billion), followed by Mainland China (over $811 billion) and the EU (over $542 billion).

Despite increasing competition from emerging science-based economies in Asia and the EU research network, the U.S. maintains an extensive and diverse research footprint. In fact, global growth in R&D has strengthened U.S. research – boosted by international collaboration. By actively engaging with scientific investments around the world, U.S. institutions enhance and extend domestic insights and amplify their contributions to global innovation. These collaborations are essential to progress in jointly addressing global challenges, such as those defined in the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The value of international collaboration

Our analysis has shown that the growth in U.S. research output is increasingly driven by international collaboration, outpacing the expansion of its domestic research base alone. Examples of this dynamic include the CERN-based Large Hadron Collider experiments, where U.S. institutions such as Fermilab and Stanford collaborate with hundreds of global partners to unlock new frontiers in particle physics. In climate science, the Argo ocean observatory program, co-led by the U.S. and multiple international agencies, provides critical data for understanding global warming and ocean dynamics.

The U.S. partners with a diverse network of global institutions, with the U.K., Germany and Mainland China among the most frequent collaborators (see Fig. 1). By engaging with world-class U.S. research groups, international partners bring complementary expertise, critical analyses and, importantly, additional research capacity and investment. In doing so they extend and amplify the reach, impact and power of the U.S. science budget, reinforcing its global leadership through shared discovery and innovation.

U.S. research impact is fairly evenly distributed across the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. As can be seen from Fig. 2, U.S. research is close to the global average in most areas but clearly exceeds the global average only in SDG 3 (Good health & well-being), SDG 7 (Affordable and clean energy) and SDG 9 (Industry, innovation & infrastructure).

Final remarks

From Nobel Prize-winning breakthroughs to practical solutions in animal and human health, U.S. research has delivered high levels of socioeconomic impact for decades. Its strength lies in sustained investment that supports varied fields of research and brings disciplines together. This system ensures that life-changing discoveries do not remain confined to laboratories but instead deliver often unforeseen real-world benefits to millions of people across the world.

As Mainland China and the European Union scale their scientific capacity, the U.S. should continue to follow its successful strategies to maintain leadership in academic research innovation and societal impact.

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