Russia’s Place in International Publication Activity Ranking: Engineering Sciences

The HSE Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge presents information about Russia’s place in a ranking of countries by the number of academic publications on engineering sciences.

According to the Web of Science (WoS), more than half a million academic publications on engineering sciences are annually published in the world. Unlike certain other scientific domains (such as natural, medical, and social sciences) where the US has firmly remained the leader for decades, China had recently taken leadership in engineering sciences with 26.9% of the global number of such publications which have appeared in 2015–2017. The US comes second (16,8%). The top ten countries also include India (6,6%), Germany (5,5%), the UK (4,8%), Japan (4,7%), the Republic of Korea (4,3%), France (4%), Italy (3,8%), and Canada (3,2%). Between 2015–2017 Russian researchers published about 55 thousand papers in engineering science journals indexed by the WoS, putting the country in the 12^th place in the ranking.

In recent years the global engineering sciences publications landscape has changed significantly. A number of countries demonstrated an explosive growth of publication activity. First of all it’s China and India whose number of relevant publications in 2005–2007 and 2015–2017 increased 3,4 and 4 times, respectively. In the past decade the number of Russian publications grew 2,4 times — higher than the average growth rate for the world. Accordingly, the country’s contribution to the global flow of publications increased from 2,1 to 2,7%. However, it wasn’t enough to move on in the ranking: in 2005–2007 Russia was the 12^th as well.

Figure 1 (in Russian) shows Russia’s position in the ranking for 43 specific engineering science areas. The X axis marks the country’s place in terms of WoS-indexed publications in 2015–2017, and the Y — the change in its ranking during 10 years (from 2005–2007 to 2015–2017). Positive values indicate improved Russian positions in the subject-specific ranking. E.g. the MINI point (2, 4) indicates the ranking in the 'Mining and processing of mineral resources' area. It shows that here Russia is 2^nd in the world in terms of the number of publications, and in the previous 10 years it has moved up 4 places in the rating. China is ahead of Russia here, while the US comes third.

Russia is one of the world’s top five countries in terms of academic publications on oil production and processing technologies (3^rd place), spectroscopy (3^rd), interdisciplinary studies (4^th), industrial technologies (5^th), metallurgy and metallurgical engineering (5^th place). Apart from the areas related to energy and efficient environmental management Russia also has good positions in certain areas of material science, mechanics, and mechanical engineering. The country’s positions in medical technologies are more modest, such as biomedical engineering (27^th place), cellular and tissue engineering (31^st), laboratory medical technologies (44^th), and some other disciplines.

An outstanding progress was made in industrial technologies (37 places up in the ranking), due to active participation of Russian scientists, primarily those employed in the university sector, in international academic conferences. This factor also helped improve the rankings in construction (32 places up) and production technologies (24 places). On the whole, Russia has moved up 10 or more places in ten specific engineering science sub-rankings — which is a significant improvement in international visibility of Russian studies. No noticeable decline of publication activity occurred in any engineering science area.

Sources: HSE ISSEK calculations based on InCites data of 01.07.2018 (for Articles, Proceedings Papers, and Reviews published in WoS-indexed journals). Publications were credited to countries indicated as workplace address of at least one of the authors. Growth is marked on the Y axis as the difference between 2015–2017 and 2005–2007 rankings. Results of the project 'Expert Evaluation of Certain Research and Education Policy Areas by Analysing International Experience and Empirical Studies’ Data'.

By Ekaterina Dyachenko, Konstantin Fursov

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