The quality level of Finnish scientific research is higher than in the OECD countries on average. In the early 2000s, Finnish publications received six citations per publication and they were cited 13 per cent more often than OECD publications on average. Finland ranked eight in a comparison of the citation impacts of all OECD countries.

Finland is among those OECD countries whose relative citation impact exceeded the OECD impact value in the early 1990s and grew rapidly throughout the whole decade.

The impact factor indicates the number of citations to publications in relation to the number of publications. The relative citation impact is the impact factor for a certain country in relation to e.g. the impact factor for OECD. It describes how many per cent more or less citations the publications of a certain country have received in comparison with the average for the OECD countries (index=1).

These statistics are based on Thomson Scientific National Science Indicators (NSI) database including world publication and citation data for 1981–2005.