Russian Science and Russian book publishing in digits and bibliometric estimates

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to investigate into the flow of Russian scientific publications on the basis of various information systems and statistical data and to determine if they can be used for forecasting Russian science devеlopment, and to specify its place in the global space of scientific knowledge. The definitions for several discussable concepts are suggested.Sources and methods. The data of information systems used for bibliometrical assessment of publication flows are namely: Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI), Web of Science Core Collection (WoS CC), Scopus, and statistical data acquired by the Russian Book Chamber (RBC). The quantitative data on the number of researchers and science funding in the Russian Federation are based on the official statistics.Results. The data on the status of the publication flow in Russia were analyzed based on RBC statistics; RSCI, WoS CC and Scopus indicators are provided. The comparison enables to conclude that each system has its own tradition of integrating journals in their information flow, its own retrospection and classification system which leads to diverging estimates of Russia’s rank in different systems.