Report: Scientific papers improved

China's scientific papers have seen steady improvement in quality, quantity and global influence in recent years, but the overall gap in quantity and quality between papers from China and the United States remains large, according to a report published on Thursday.

This year, China has moved into second place in two new scientific fields behind the US - geoscience and plant and animal science - according to the number of citations from 2008 to October this year.

The results are from the 2018 edition of Statistical Data of Chinese Science and Technology Papers. The report, which examines scientific output from the Chinese mainland, has been released annually since 1987 by the Ministry of Science and Technology's Institute of Scientific and Technical Information.