Collaborate globally to retain strength in AI research, UK urged

The UK has been urged to harness international collaborations to retain its strength in artificial intelligence research after new data showed the country produces more than a quarter of highly cited papers in this area.

An analysis by academic publisher Elsevier showed 26.7 per cent of UK outputs on AI rank among the world’s top 10 per cent of most highly cited papers, compared with an average of 18.2 per cent globally.

Meanwhile, 41.3 per cent of UK papers are published in the top 10 per cent of journal percentiles, “far exceeding” the global figure of 28.7 per cent.

Looking at AI research published between 2015 and 2024, the data is sourced from Elsevier’s Scopus platform, the world’s largest research abstract and citations database.

Sarah Main, vice-president of academic and government relations in the UK for Elsevier, told Times Higher Education she found it “extraordinary” that the UK represented “over a quarter of the world’s most highly cited, most relevant research on AI”.

However, the Elsevier data also shows that other countries may be outpacing the UK on productivity when it comes to research into AI.

Between 2015 and 2024, the UK’s output increased more than fivefold, from 2,660 papers to 14,279. Over the same period, however, global output grew nearly sevenfold, with Elsevier finding this increase to be “driven by particularly rapid expansion after 2018”.

And despite continued annual growth in output by volume, the UK’s share of global AI publications fell from 5.9 per cent in 2015 to 4.6 per cent in 2024.

“I don’t see it as concerning,” Main said, adding: “Personally I think it’s something to be celebrated that we’re seeing real advancement in knowledge economies around the world.”

She continued: “We do need to be aware that that’s the global picture, and I think that there are huge opportunities in that. The UK is a collaborative research nation.”

Main pointed to previous Elsevier findings, showing that more than half of UK research publications are done in conjunction with an international partner.

“When we collaborate, the impact of that research is more powerful,” she noted.

Another positive result found the UK’s AI research is more likely to be cited in policy and patents – 5.5 per cent is cited in policy, compared with a global average of 2.1 per cent, and 9 per cent is cited by patents (versus 7.5 per cent).

Asked whether UK research nonetheless required more investment when the US and China were considered global superpowers on harnessing the technology, Main pointed to “record” investment by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) in the area.

In February, it committed more than £1.6 billion in funding “directly targeted at the AI sector”.

“The UK – its strength has always been in that sense of quality, frontier, innovative research, and not so much in share of global volume of research,” Main said. “Ensuring that we retain that sense of quality and frontier thinking is going to be really important for us.”

Acknowledging that UKRI would be thinking about how to support the government's industrial strategy goals, which include the creation of numerous AI growth zones, Main said: “There’s an interesting area for the UK in thinking about how we can use our research excellence to advance those goals...in areas like clean energy, and so on. Those are exciting questions.”

“Research itself is changing because of AI,” Main added. “These are parallel areas, but they are connected, and the more we have a frontier capability in research about AI, the more we can leverage that.”

georgia.luckhurst@timeshighereducation.com