Abstract
In tandem with the rapid globalisation of science, spatial scientometrics has
become an important research sub-field in scientometric studies. Recently,
numerous spatial scientometric contributions have focused on the examination of
cities' scientific output by using various scientometric indicators. In this
paper, I analyse cities' scientific output worldwide in terms of the number of
journal articles indexed by the Scopus database, in the period from 1986 to
2015. Furthermore, I examine which countries are the most important
collaborators of cities. Finally, I identify the most productive disciplines in
each city. I use GPS Visualizer to illustrate the scientometric data of nearly
2,200 cities on maps. Results show that cities with the highest scientific
output are mostly located in developed countries and China. Between 1986 and
2015, the greatest number of scientific articles were created in Beijing. The
international hegemony of the United States in science has been described by
many studies, and is also reinforced by the fact that the United States is the
most important collaborator to more than 75 percent of all cities. Medicine is
the most productive discipline in two-thirds of cities. Furthermore, cities
having the highest scientific output in specific disciplines show well-defined
geographical patterns.