The UK is the second most productive country in the world when it comes to publishing scientific papers, a global analysis of research papers has revealed. It shows that the US produced almost 35 per cent of the world's scientific papers between 1997 and 2001, while the UK accounted for 9.43 per cent of publications. Sir David King, Chief Scientific Adviser, published the analysis in last week's edition of the journal Nature . The analysis also shows that the UK produced 12.8 per cent of the world's most cited papers.