Declining contribution of the United States federal government to global research corpus

Departments and agencies of the United States federal government conduct research on topics ranging from nuclear technology to economic policy. Using the Scopus bibliographic database, I quantified the number of publications by US federal government authors from January 2019--July 2025. I found that the number of articles and book chapters published from January-July 2025 was 14%-19% lower than during the same time period of 2024, resulting in publication deficit of 2,638-6,489 articles. Changes in executive branch policy related to the funding and staffing of federal agencies have led to warnings of an imminent and potentially catastrophic decline in the scientific preeminence of the United States. The results presented here suggest that this decline has already been set in motion.