Researchers in R&D (per million people)
- World average (population-weighted)
- 2,261 /M
- across 76 countries, 2023
- Latest observation
- 2024
- Source updated
- 13 Jul 2026
- CountryAtlas refreshed
- 11 Sep 2026
- Snapshot 20260911T072322Z
World map
One value per country for the selected year. Hatched = no data.
- 1 /M – 245 /M
- 245 /M – 902 /M
- 902 /M – 2,038 /M
- 2,038 /M – 3,704 /M
- 3,704 /M – 5,839 /M
- 5,839 /M – 18,130 /M
- No data
Trend
Aggregate across the countries of a group, year by year. Computed by CountryAtlas from country values — no published aggregate is used.
- Population-weighted mean
- Median
2 series from 1996 to 2024: Population-weighted mean, Median.
Highest and lowest
The five leaders and the five trailing countries, 2023.
Top 5
- 18,130 /M
- 9,472 /M
- 8,911 /M
- 8,838 /M
- 8,315 /M
Source: World Bank — WDI · SP.POP.SCIE.RD.P6
Compare countries
Pick up to five countries. Defaults to the three largest economies with data.
- China
- Germany
- Japan
3 series from 1996 to 2023: China, Germany, Japan.
Definition
- Definition
- Unit
- per million people (/M)
- Frequency
- Annual
- Aggregation
- none · Higher is better
- Valid range
- 0 – 20000
Sources & provenance
Every value on this page comes from one of these series, chosen per country by priority.
- Priority #1Open at source145 countries · 1,973 obs. · → 2024 · CC BY 4.0
The number of researchers engaged in Research &Development (R&D), expressed as per million. Researchers are professionals who conduct research and improve or develop concepts, theories, models techniques instrumentation, software of operational methods. R&D covers basic research, applied research, and experimental development. Source: Stat Bulk Data Download Service, UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), uri: https://databrowser.uis.unesco.org/resources/bulk, publisher: UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), date accessed: 2025-03-26, date published: 2025-02
Series-level selection: for each country the whole series comes from the highest-priority source that has any non-forecast value for it. If a lower-priority source is more than three years fresher, the freshest source wins instead. Non-chosen values are kept as alternatives, never discarded.
Countries without data
142 of 218 countries have no value for 2023.
- India
- United States
- Indonesia
- Nigeria
- Brazil
- Bangladesh
- Ethiopia
- Philippines
- DR Congo
- Iran
- Tanzania
- United Kingdom
- South Africa
- Colombia
- Sudan
- Iraq
- Afghanistan
- Yemen
- Canada
- Angola
- Ukraine
- Morocco
- Malaysia
- Mozambique
- 118 more
Typical reasons: the source does not survey small territories or micro-states; the statistical office reports with a lag of one to three years; the series is only compiled for member countries of the source organisation (OECD, EU, Eurostat); or a value exists but failed validation and is quarantined rather than shown.
Downloads & API
Every observation for this indicator, all countries and years, with provenance columns.
API example
One country, full history. Replace CAN by any ISO3 code or slug.
curl -s "https://www.countryatlas.co/api/v1/series?country=CAN&indicator=researchers-per-million" | jq '.series[0] | {country: .country.name, unit, last: .stats.last, source: .provenance.source_name}'