Additive manufacturing

Building parts layer by layer: industrial 3D printing in metal, polymer and ceramic.

China leads additive manufacturing research, with 34.0% of the 10% most cited papers published 2021–2025; the United States is second with 11.3%.

FirstChina34.0%

SecondUnited States11.3%

3.0×lead, by share of the 10% most cited papers, 2021–2025

Highlight a country

Standings

1CNChina34.0%2USUnited States11.3%3INIndia6.7%4AUAustralia3.9%5GBUnited Kingdom3.6%6–7ITItaly2.9%6–7SGSingapore2.9%8IRIran2.3%9–10DEGermany2.1%9–10CACanada2.1%

Share of the 10% most cited papers, 2021–2025; 4,048 papers. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

Year by year

China

Everyone else, on a larger scale

Share of the 10% most cited papers published in each year. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

Inside the field

Always the top 10%Pilot

Each paper sorted into one sub-area by an AI model reading its title and abstract, then credited as usual. On 200 hand-labelled papers it chose the same sub-area, or a defensible second, 92% of the time.

Sub-area	Papers	First	Second	Third
Steels, aluminium, high-entropy and other metal alloys	818	CNChina50.6%	USUnited States8.8%	INIndia4.8%
Polymer extrusion printing and fibre-reinforced polymer composites	629	CNChina15.3%	USUnited States9.2%	INIndia9.1%
Metal printing process physics, defects and monitoring	506	CNChina27.3%	USUnited States23.2%	SGSingapore5.4%
General reviews, industrial adoption and sustainability	476	CNChina15.3%	INIndia14.7%	USUnited States12.7%
Lattice structures, TPMS and design for additive manufacturing	460	CNChina40.0%	USUnited States7.5%	AUAustralia5.4%
Biomedical, dental, pharmaceutical and food printing	279	CNChina23.9%	USUnited States9.0%	INIndia7.4%
Nickel superalloys	232	CNChina52.2%	USUnited States8.2%	INIndia6.4%
Titanium alloys	211	CNChina49.2%	AUAustralia9.2%	INIndia6.7%
Vat photopolymerisation, direct ink writing and 4D printing	152	CNChina25.9%	USUnited States19.1%	DEGermany5.9%
Ceramic printing	140	CNChina57.6%	USUnited States7.1%	ITItaly3.9%

Share of each sub-area's papers in the top 10%. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

Earlier and recent

The same top 10%, split into 2021–2023 and 2024–2025.

FallingRising2021–20232024–2025Change

CNChina 29.9%38.5%+8.5 pts

USUnited States 12.8%9.7%−3.1 pts

INIndia 7.1%6.2%−0.9 pts

AUAustralia 4.2%3.6%−0.6 pts

GBUnited Kingdom 4.5%2.5%−2.0 pts

ITItaly 3.1%2.8%−0.4 pts

SGSingapore 3.3%2.4%−0.9 pts

IRIran 2.0%2.6%+0.6 pts

Share of the 10% most cited papers: 2,130 papers in 2021–2023, 1,918 in 2024–2025. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

2026 so far: a different count

Not the most cited papers: every 2026 paper matched so far (8,223), and a paper counts in full for each country on it. This year's papers are too new to rank by citations, so these shares cannot be compared with the ones above.

CNChina38.2%of 2026 papers have an author here
USUnited States12.4%of 2026 papers have an author here
INIndia9.7%of 2026 papers have an author here
DEGermany6.3%of 2026 papers have an author here
ITItaly4.4%of 2026 papers have an author here

Who cites the top papers

How much more often a country's top papers are cited from home than its size predicts. Expected is the country's share of all papers in the field; the bar is the excess, in percentage points. Home citers include authors citing their own earlier work.

HomeExpectedExcess

CNChina 57.7%31.6%+26.1

USUnited States 21.7%15.4%+6.3

INIndia 20.5%9.0%+11.5

AUAustralia 7.8%3.4%+4.4

GBUnited Kingdom 12.9%5.7%+7.2

Based on up to 100 of each country's most cited single-country papers in the top 10%. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

Behind the share

Institutions with the most credit

1CNNorthwestern Polytechnical University1.4%
2SGNanyang Technological University1.1%
3CNHarbin Institute of Technology1.1%
4CNHuazhong University of Science and Technology1.0%
5SGNational University of Singapore0.9%
6CNShanghai Jiao Tong University0.9%
7CNSouthern University of Science and Technology0.8%
8CNBeijing Institute of Technology0.8%
9CNUniversity of Science and Technology Beijing0.7%
10CNCentral South University0.7%

Share of the top 10%. Institutions across all 45 technologies

Who does the work

Sector	All	CN	US	IN
Universities	85.7%	87.9%	85.2%	93.6%
Research facilities	9.3%	7.4%	9.6%	2.9%
Government labs	2.6%	2.8%	2.1%	2.5%
Companies	1.3%	1.5%	2.0%	0.1%

Share of credit by type of institution, overall and for the three leading countries.

Across borders

35.9% of the top 10% have authors in more than one country.

AUCNAustralia with China131
CNSGChina with Singapore127
CNUSChina with United States121
CNGBChina with United Kingdom112
CNHKChina with Hong Kong85

Most frequent pairings, by number of shared papers.

The papers behind the numbers

The five most cited papers this definition catches. If one looks out of place, the definition needs work.

Metal additive manufacturing in aerospace: A review
Materials & Design, 2021AUDENOUSZA
2,240citations
Material-structure-performance integrated laser-metal additive manufacturing
Science, 2021CNDEGBUS
1,702citations
Directed energy deposition (DED) additive manufacturing: Physical characteristics, defects, challenges and applications
Materials Today, 2021ILUS
1,369citations
Direct Ink Writing: A 3D Printing Technology for Diverse Materials
Advanced Materials, 2022BDUS
1,335citations
A Review of Vat Photopolymerization Technology: Materials, Applications, Challenges, and Future Trends of 3D Printing
Polymers, 2021CZ
834citations

More in materials and manufacturing

The most technologically advanced countries, and is China ahead of the US?

How this technology is defined

A paper counts if its title or abstract matches the search below. Articles in core journals and proceedings only; retracted papers are excluded.

"additive manufacturing" OR "3D printing" OR "selective laser melting" OR "laser powder bed fusion" OR "directed energy deposition" OR "electron beam melting"

and its main topic in OpenAlex is one of: Additive Manufacturing Materials and Processes; Additive Manufacturing and 3D Printing Technologies; Cellular and Composite Structures; Topology Optimization in Engineering; Titanium Alloys Microstructure and Properties; High Entropy Alloys Studies; High Temperature Alloys and Creep; Photopolymerization techniques and applications; Advanced Welding Techniques Analysis. The topic check removes papers that only mention the technology.

Papers matched, 2021–2025: 40,467
In the top 10%: 4,048
In the top 1%: 406
Countries with credit: 90
Credit with no known country: 4.0%

Every one of the 4,600 most cited papers was checked for relevance; 97 were left out as not about additive manufacturing

The most cited of those left out:

A state-of-the-art review of the fabrication and characteristics of titanium and its alloys for biomedical applications461 citations
A high-entropy alloy with dislocation-precipitate skeleton for ultrastrength and ductility255 citations
Towards load-bearing biomedical titanium-based alloys: From essential requirements to future developments252 citations
The toughness of mechanical metamaterials230 citations
Eutectic high-entropy alloys and their applications in materials processing engineering: A review217 citations
Comprehensive review on high entropy alloy-based coating208 citations
Accelerated and conventional development of magnetic high entropy alloys207 citations
Frontiers in high entropy alloys and high entropy functional materials167 citations
Processing and microstructure of Ti-Cu binary alloys: A comprehensive review159 citations
Tailoring the strengthening mechanisms of high-entropy alloys toward excellent strength-ductility synergy by metalloid silicon alloying: A review145 citations
Recent advances in UV/thermal curing silicone polymers144 citations
Genetic algorithm based topology optimization of heat exchanger fins used in aerospace applications137 citations

Definition version 0.5, pilot. It is a plain text file: copy it, change it, rerun it.

Read the method