Relative to population and GDP, Finland is one of the world’s biggest publishers, ahead of such traditionally strong countries in scientific research as the UK and Germany. In 2005, Finnish researchers produced 8,300 publications, the highest figure on record. The number of publications by Finnish researchers in international esteemed scientific journals has increased 2.5-fold during the past 20 years. The growth has been fastest in the early 1990s, when the number of publications increased at around 8 per cent per annum. In the 2000s, the annual growth rate has slowed to a few per cent.

Finnish publications account for just over 2 per cent of all EU 25 publications and for just over 1 per cent of all OECD publications. Relative to population, the number of publications produced in Finland in 2005 was 1,600 per one million population. In a comparison of 30 OECD countries Finland ranked fourth after Switzerland, Sweden and Denmark. In 1995, Finland ranked fifth.

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