Looking around the room today, I’m reminded that research truly is a human pursuit: it thrives on face-to-face connections.
It’s easy to forget that, when you’re a student, and it’s late at night, and you’re the last person left in the lab – again.
So, every so often, it’s worth pausing to remember just how many people are out there, working hard, gathering data – just like you.
Worldwide, there are more than eight million researchers.
Every year, we produce well over a quarter of a million new PhDs.
China alone has added more than a million people to its research workforce since 2011.
Not all of these researchers will work in academia – but those who do are highly productive.
They publish in the order of four million academic journal articles every year, spread across more than 40,000 journals.
