A Study of Grant Support from Russian Scientific Foundations to Domestic Publications in Leading International Journals (based on Data from Scopus and Web of Science, the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, and the Russian Science Foundation)

Abstract

This article presents a scientometric analysis of funding information provided in publications with Russian affiliation in leading scientific journals that are indexed in both main citation databases, Scopus and Web of Science. Metadata of the array of publications with Russian affiliation that were published in Nature Index journals in 2014–2017 were used as a base for comparing the completeness of data on grant foundations in the two databases and identifying Russian foundations and organizations linked to the largest number of such publications. The article analyzes the grant support for publications of the leading Russian universities and examines the dynamics of activity of both Russian and foreign foundations, as well as international co-authorship. Conclusions are drawn about the significant superiority of the Web of Science in terms of completeness of information indexing and about the distribution of references to the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR) and the Russian Science Foundation (RSF). The number of publications that acknowledge the RFBR as the grant sponsor previously exceeded the number of publications that acknowledge the RSF; however, the trend has recently changed, as the RSF has started to show up in a larger number of publications; the role of foreign grant sponsors remains significant. Additionally, directions of comparative citation impact analysis depending on the grant sponsor are outlined.