Russia in the Global Array of Scientific Publications

Abstract

The results on the representation of Russian publications in the global array of publications on narrow thematic trends are presented for the entire post-Soviet period against the backdrop of the ranking in the Web of Science Core Collection (WoS CC). The Web of Science Categories classifier was used for search and subsequent analysis. Of the 252 WoS CC subject categories, results on 132 scientific trends were obtained in which the share of Russian publications in 2010‒2017 was no less than 0.4% of the global flows in the respective disciplines. As a result, it was discovered that Russia had gradually been restoring its positions, lost after 1993‒2000, in the global rating of countries by the number of publications in the WoS CC. At present, positive changes are observed both for the entire array of Russian publications and as differentiated by narrow scientific subjects. It has been discovered that Russia reached its maximal positions in the ranking in 1993‒1999, while the greatest decline, when the share of Russian publications was minimal, fell to 2011–2014. Data about the scientific trends in which Russia has been among the top ten countries by the share of publications in the global array over the entire post-Soviet period are presented. This list somewhat widened from 2010 through 2017 and now comprises 39 trends in which Russia is among the Top-10; in eight knowledge areas, it is among the top five countries.