The Mendeley collaboration company has published the Global Research Report (http://mnd.ly/global-research-report), an analysis of two million scholars' research activity in relation to economic indicators and research productivity. 

The report details the extent to which a country's GDP per capita and R&D expenditure per capita limit its researchers' access to academic papers. Developing countries face considerable challenges - to afford an additional 50 research papers for each scientist would require a ten-fold increase in R&D expenditure per capita. The recent trend towards Open Access publishing helps researchers be able to understand and cite other works without onerous costs - and that  is a pathway towards true Open Publishing, where both access and publication are free of charge. 

The Global Research Report also provides rankings on which countries, world regions, and universities are reading the most academic papers (using Mendeley) and spending the most time per day studying the literature (only countries with at least 1,000 Mendeley users were included). 

On a global average, an academic's Mendeley research paper collection contains 142.8 documents. The top three world regions, countries, and research institutions by size of their Mendeley research paper collection are:

World Region

1. Western Europe: 187.1

2. North America: 171.6

3. East Asia: 156.2

1. Argentina: 267.6

2. France: 232.6

3. Germany: 222.9

1. University of Lausanne: 383.1

2. United States Geological Survey: 380.4

3. Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle: 379.1

In September 2012, the average researcher spent 1:12h per day studying the academic literature using Mendeley. The top three regions, countries, and institutions by their researchers' daily studying time were:

World Region

1. Western Europe: 1:19h

2. Oceania: 1:18h

3. East Asia: 1:15h

1. Netherlands: 1:25h

2. South Africa: 1:24h

3. United Kingdom: 1:22h

1. Durham University: 1:47h

2. ENS Lyon: 1:44h

3. University of Manchester: 1:39h

China came in 4th in daily studying time using the Mendeley tool, while the United States ranked 49th in Mendeley usage. The complete data can be found in the Global Research Report.

Commenting on the release of the report, Dr. Victor Henning, CEO&Co-Founder of Mendeley, said: "I hope that the global research community is as fascinated by this data as we are. Who knows, looking at the rankings, maybe tomorrow professors worldwide will put up notices in their labs: 'Less cat pictures, more studying!'"