Research institutions in France, Germany and Japan top the Reuters Top 25 Global Innovators ranking of government research institutions

NEW YORK, March 8, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Alternative Energies & Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), Fraunhofer Society and Japan Science & Technology Agency top the Reuters Top 25 Global Innovators ranking of government research institutions. North America has seven institutions on the list include the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (No.4), the U.S. Department of Energy (No.8), the U.S. Department for Veteran Affairs (No.12) and the National Research Council of Canada (No.14).

Silicon Valley's hoodie-wearing tech entrepreneurs are the poster kids of innovation. But the innovators who are really changing the world are more likely to wear suits and hold civil service jobs in Grenoble, Munich or Tokyo. That's the conclusion of Reuters' Top 25 Global Innovators - Government, a list that identifies and ranks the publicly funded institutions doing the most to advance science and technology. It took a government agency to put a man on the moon, and even in the age of the Internet, governments are still moving science and technology forward. They do pure research that private companies often find it hard to justify and afford, and make discoveries that launch entire industries: publicly funded organizations split the atom, invented the Internet, and mapped the human genome.

European institutions dominate the list, accounting for nine out of 25 ranked institutions, more than any other continent. Asia comes in second with eight institutions. North America might have only seven institutions on the list, but taken on a country-by-country basis, the United States dominates, with six organizations ranked. France and Japan each have four, and Germany has three.

To compile the ranking, the IP & Science division of Thomson Reuters began by identifying more than 500 global organizations - including universities, nonprofit charities, and government-funded institutions - that published the most articles in academic journals. Then they identified the total number of patents filed by each organization and evaluated each candidate on factors including how many patents it filed, how often those applications were granted, how many patents were filed to global patent offices in addition to local authorities and how often the patents were cited by other patents. Candidates were also evaluated in terms of the number of articles published by researchers in academic journals, how often those papers were cited by patents and how many articles featured a co-author from industry. Finally, they trimmed the list so that it only included government-run or funded organizations, and then ranked them based on their performance.

For more on the Reuters Top 25 Global Innovators - Government, including a detailed methodology and profiles of the institutions, visit www.reuters.com/global-innovators-government.

The Reuters Top 25 Global Innovators - Government

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