Russia in the world array of scientific publications

Abstract

This article presents the results of a study on the representation of Russian publications in the global array of publications that discuss narrow thematic areas within the entire post-Soviet period, using ranking distributions from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoS CC). For extraction and analysis, the classifiers provided by the WoS categories were used. Of the 252 subject categories in the WoS CC, the share of Russian publications for 2010–2017 was not less than 0.4% of the global flow in 132 scientific areas. Therefore, in the period 1993–2000, a gradual recovery was found of Russia’s lost position in the world ranking of countries by number of publications in the WoS CC. Currently, positive changes have been observed both for the entire array of Russian publications in particular in narrow scientific topics. The highest-ranking position for Russian publications fell in 1993–1999, and the greatest decline, when the share of Russian publications fell to their minimum values, was in 2011–2014. Data on the scientific areas in which Russia managed to stay in the top 10 leading countries during its recent history, according to share of publications in the global array, are presented. This list slightly expanded from 2010 to 2017, and today, it includes 39 areas in which Russia is in the top 10 countries, and it is among the five leading countries in eight areas of knowledge.