BEIJING, July 8 -- Chinese science publications were the fourth most cited globally between 2004 to 2014, according to statistics released on Wednesday.

Data released by the Chinese Academy of Science and Technology for Development (CASTED) showed the country's publications were among the most referenced by scholars and other academics.

In the past decade, China had more than 12,000 highly-cited papers, coming after Germany, with 14,000 papers, in the third place. The United States and Britain rank the first and second on the list, with 62,000 and 16,000 papers respectively.

The new data also showed China is slowly working its way toward the top when it comes innovation index rankings. In 2013, China ranked 19th on the index measuring innovation capability, in the middle of the 40 major ranked countries.

But China has closed the gap between Belgium, the 18th place, compared with its previous performance.

The top five countries of the ranking are the U.S., Japan, Switzerland, South Korea and Israel.

Data showed China's R&D expenditure in 2013 topped 191.2 billion U.S. dollars, surpassing Japan for the first time and placing it second only next to the U.S.. At the same time, the number of Science Citation Index (SCI) papers in China reached 213,000, accounting for 15 percent of the world total.

Wu Yishan, vice president of the CASTED, said that with the progress it has made, measured by the index, China is "very likely" to achieve its targets on promoting scientific and technological innovation set in its 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015) as scheduled by the end of this year.

"We still have a long way to go to catch up with developed countries," said Wu.

The index contains five sub-indices, which measure the innovation resources, innovation performance, innovation environment, business innovation and knowledge innovation.