BEIJING — China ranked second worldwide in terms of citations of scientific papers by the country's researchers, a government think tank revealed on Nov 19.

Among the world's highly cited papers in the past decade, Chinese scientists contributed 30,755 papers, or 20 percent of the global share, said a report by the Ministry of Science and Technology’s Institute of Scientific and Technical Information.

By last September, China ranked second in the world for the number of hot papers with a total number of 1,056, up one spot from the previous year, accounting for 32.6 percent of the world's total, the institute said.

The report also revealed that a total of 11,318 scientific papers published in journals with the highest impact factors in 2018 have come from Chinese researchers, the second-highest number worldwide.

Chinese research papers in the fields of material science, chemistry and engineering technology were the most cited in the world in the past decade, according to the report.