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From the Soviet Union to the Russian Federation: publication activity dynamics along the evolution of national science policies

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Abstract

This article seeks to provide a comprehensive overview of publication activity dynamics in the USSR and in the Russian Federation in the context of evolution of national economic and political systems and science policies. A broad set of bibliometric indicators derived from the Web of Science Core Collection database and InCites electronic analytical tool were used to assess the scientific output of the Soviet and Russian research establishments. Various aspects of path dependence of contemporary Russia’s patterns of publication activity on the earlier institutional models of the R&D sector established in the Soviet Union were considered. This path dependence may be clearly observed in the thematic structure of scientific publications (even more so in internationally collaborated papers), in the composition of partner countries for joint publications, and in citation indicators. The evolution of national science policies is tracked in the context of historical development of policy instruments and government actions intended to stimulate and support the publication activity of Russian (and Soviet) academics and maximize their potential effects upon the country’s key research performance indicators.

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Notes

  1. No examination is performed here with regard to the variety of these indicators and their strengths and weaknesses. These issues have been widely discussed in the specialized literature: (Kostoff, 1997; Pendlebury, 2009; Gingras, 2014; Belter, 2015; Haustein and Larivière, 2015; Kosten, 2016; Rijcke et al., 2016).

  2. For example, in China in the last two to three years, the criteria for assessing the scientific productivity of national scientists have been significantly revised. If in the 2000s the Chinese government directly stimulated the PA of scientists, taking into account quantitative bibliometric indicators, now emphasis is placed upon the quality of publications, taking into account the national interests and needs of the country, increasing the availability of information on the results of R&D for the Chinese audience, etc. (Huang, 2020; Xu, 2020).

  3. Detailed information on the InCites is available via the URL-link: https://clarivate.com/products/incites.

  4. These types of publications are included in the analysis in addition to the three so-called cited document types (articles, proceedings papers, and reviews) to take into account the WoS CC-indexed publications of the USSR as fully as possible. In the USSR, other types of documents apart from articles, proceedings papers, and reviews make up quite a significant share of the country’s corpus of publications in the WoS CC: 16.7% for 1973-1992.

  5. The country “Russia” in the WoS CC had 1.5 ths. publications (of all types) in 1990, 2.1 ths. in 1991, 10.2 ths. in 1992, and 27,400 in 1993.

  6. The calculation of fractional count was not directly possible neither in Web of Science nor in InCites at the time when analysis was performed.

  7. See more on the methodology of calculation of this indicator in: http://help.prod-incites.com/inCites2Live/indicatorsGroup/aboutHandbook/usingCitationIndicatorsWisely/impactRelativeToWorld.html.

  8. Multiple editions of the annual statistical data books "National Economy of the USSR" (e.g. in editions of 1965, 1972, 1977, 1981, 1987) in a footnote to a table, which provided the data on R&D personnel in the USSR, stated invariably for many years that “the number of researchers in the USSR is one quarter of all researchers in the world”. Such rough estimates were quite typical for the Soviet statistical practice when comparing the USSR to the rest of the world or to so-called capitalistic (or Western Block) countries.

  9. Indicators (quantitative estimates) were calculated based on five-year periods. In total, three programmes were prepared (1981-2000, 1986-2005, 1991-2010).

  10. For China, the USSR and further Russia in 1980-1989 and 1990-1999 was a more important partner than China for a country (IRIR was 3.23 and 1.83 respectively). For 2000-2009, the average IRIR for China decreased to 0.77.

  11. For some partner countries of Russia with 100 + joint publications in 2019 the average IRIR for 2010-2019 was very high (20.9-55.6): Uzbekistan, Mongolia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Sri Lanka.

  12. Since one publication may belong to several fields of science the sum of publications by fields of science (on the level of broad OECD FOS classification as well as on the second level of this classification) exceeds 100%.

  13. Globally the “Humanities” (and to a lesser extent “Social sciences”) also shows much less intensity of international collaborations compared to other fields of science. In 2010-2019, the overall share of ICPs in the global number of publications in “Humanities” was 3.3-6.6%, in “Social Sciences” 10.9-19.8% vs. 16.2-22.4% for all fields of science and 21.6-27.6% in “Natural Sciences”.

  14. According to the journal citation report (JCR) in 2019, most Russian journals in the SCIE and SSCI (86%) were in Q4. There was only one Russian journal in Q1 and there were six in Q2 out of 150 of the country’s journals in the SCIE and SSCI. For comparison, China had 59.9% of domestic WoS CC-indexed journals in the Q1 and Q2, the USA – 58.9%.

  15. On the second level of classification the largest fields of science by number of publications in Q1 journals in 2019 are: ‘Physical sciences’ (25.0% of the total Russia’s number), ‘Clinical medicine’ (23.5%), ‘Chemical sciences’ (18.4%), ‘Biological sciences’ (12.8%), ‘Materials engineering’ (11.1%), ‘Basic medical research’ (10.3%).

  16. For explanation of the extremely low numbers of publications in Q1 journals in ‘Humanities’ see footnote to Fig. 5.

  17. In some comparatively large second-level fields of science, the share of Q1 journal publications was even higher in 2019: 52.0% in ‘Clinical medicine’; 43.4% in ‘Agricultural biotechnology’.

  18. In some second-level fields of science, this figure exceeded 75% in 2019: ‘Earth and related environmental science’ (78.6%); ‘Agriculture, forestry, fisheries’ (77.6%); ‘Other social sciences’ (77.4%).

  19. The key quantitative goal of the 5-100 Project is to ensure that in 2020 at least five of the 21 universities participating in the project, be among the top 100 universities in one of three international university rankings: Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings, Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings and Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU).

  20. For detailed analysis of the impact of the 5-100 Project on Russia’s PA see (Turko et al., 2016; Guskov et al., 2017 and 2018; Matveeva and Ferligoj, 2020; Matveeva et al., 2021; Lovakov et al., 2021).

  21. The Russian Science Fund was established in 2014 to support ambitious scientific projects and scientists performing research at the highest international level.

  22. Some authors examined the situation with publications in the so-called potentially-predatory journals. E.g. (Marina and Sterligov, 2021) analyzed the Scopus database and showed that the share of publications in potentially predatory journals in Russia increased from 0.24% in 2010 to its maximum level of 8.41% in 2016 while in the USA, the UK, Germany, France, Canada and Spain it was lower than 1% in the period 2010-2018. (Guskov et al., 2018) show that some universities which participated in the 5-100 Project had extremely high share of publications in predatory journals.

  23. (Sterligov, 2021) calculated the share of conference papers in the total number of the so-called citable documents (conference papers, articles, and reviews) of Russia in the Web of Science (ESCI data is excluded). Median value of this indicator for top-55 countries by the number of WoS CC-indexed citable documents was 9.5% in 2019.

  24. To compare, in Japan the share of conference papers in 2019 was 12.6%, 11.1% in Germany, 10.2% in France, 10.0% in China, 8.8% in the USA, 6.8% in the UK.

  25. The volume of GERD in 2019 at constant prices of 1989 was 1.8 times higher than in 2000, but only at 61% of the 1989 level.

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Acknowledgements

This article is based on the study funded by the Basic Research Program of the HSE University.

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National Research University Higher School of Economics

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  1. HSE University, 9-11 Myasnitskaya Street, 101000, Moscow, Russian Federation

    Leonid Gokhberg, Tatiana Kuznetsova & Maxim Kotsemir

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  1. Leonid Gokhberg
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  2. Tatiana Kuznetsova
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  3. Maxim Kotsemir
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Correspondence to Maxim Kotsemir.

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Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 7, 8, 9, 10.

Table 7 Key indicators of publication activity in leading countries in the web of science core collection in 1980–2019
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Table 8 Key indicators of mutual importance of the USSR/Russia and its partner countries in joint publications in the web of science core collection in 1980–2019
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Table 9 Key citation indicators in the USSR/russia and selected countries in the web of science core collection in 1980–2019
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Table 10 Effect of international research collaboration on key indicators of publication activity of Russia and selected countries in the web of science core collection for 2015–2019
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See Figures

Fig. 5
figure 5

Structure of Internationally Collaborated Publications (ICPs) of the USSR/Russia in the Web of Science Core Collection in 1973–2019 by Partner Countries. For 2005–2019, data from the ESCI database were taken into account. Sources: Authors' calculations based on the Web of Science Core Collection (for 1973–1979, updated May 3, 2019) and InCites (for 1980–2019, based on the Web of Science Core Collection content indexed through June 30, 2020)

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5,

Fig. 6
figure 6

Source: authors’ calculations based on the InCites (based on the Web of Science Core Collection content indexed through June 30, 2020)

Thematic Structure of Publications of the USSR/Russia in the Web of Science Core Collection in 1980–2019 by the OECD fields of science. 1. The sum of shares of all fields of science exceeds 100% given that one publication can be attached to several OECD fields of science. 2. For 2005–2019, data from the ESCI database were taken into account.

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6,

Fig. 7
figure 7

Source: authors’ calculations based on the InCites (based on the Web of Science Core Collection content indexed through June 30, 2020)

Key Indicators of International Research Collaboration of the USSR/Russia in the Web of Science Core Collection by the OECD fields of science in 1980–2019. For 2005–2019, data from the ESCI database was taken into account.

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7,

Fig. 8
figure 8

Source: authors’ calculations based on the InCites (based on the Web of Science Core Collection content indexed through June 30, 2020)

Key Citation Indicators of Publications of the USSR/Russia in the Web of Science Core Collection by the OECD fields of science in 1980–2019. For 2005–2019, data from the ESCI database were taken into account.

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8,

Fig. 9
figure 9

Source: authors' calculations based on the InCites (based on the Web of Science content indexed through June 30, 2020)

Key Indicators of Publication Activity of Russia in the First Quartile Journals (Q1) in Web of Science Core Collection in 1997, 2005, 2015 and 2019 by the OECD Fields of Science. 1. Data rows start from 1997 since 1997—is the earliest year for which data on distribution of publications in SSCI and SCIE by journal quartiles data is available in the Incites. 2. Sum of the shares of all fields of science in the total number of publications in Q1 exceeds 100% since some publications are attributed to several fields of science. 3. Extremely low numbers of publications in Q1 journals in “Humanities” are explained by the fact that for Arts & Humanities Index (A&HCI) journal impact factors are not calculated by Clarivate Analytics. Therefore, only those journals (quite small number) from A&HCI that are indexed also in the Social Sciences Index (SSCI) and Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) receive journal impact factors.

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9.

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Gokhberg, L., Kuznetsova, T. & Kotsemir, M. From the Soviet Union to the Russian Federation: publication activity dynamics along the evolution of national science policies. Scientometrics 128, 6195–6246 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04838-8

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