Eastern European perspective on Security Studies. Lessons from Poland

Abstract

ObjectivesThe aim of the article is to determine the directions of research conducted in the field of security, and realized by the most frequently cited (according to popular bibliometric databases) scholars. On this basis, the frequency of selection of research areas of Polish scientists dealing with issues in the field of security was determined.Material and methodsThe text presents the author's conclusions from a cross-sectional analysis of Scopus and Google Scholar databases of the most frequently cited authors. The selection of sources was based on several citation indices. Foreign publications were selected in the field of social science on the basis of citations from the internationally recognized and prestigious Scopus database . The analysis refers to the years 2015-2020, as this is the period in which the scientific discipline took shape.ResultsPolish research, despite raising often important from the point of view of world security problems, is not very noticed in the world. There are several reasons for this. First of all, until recently, it was published mainly in Polish. Secondly, local scientific periodicals or multi-author monographs were usually chosen as the place of publication.ConclusionsThe Polish literature is dominated by topics related to internal security, such as: public and general security (crisis management), social security, cultural security, etc. Another theme is terrorism (along with its varieties), which is replaced by other problems, such as: the aging of society, the relationship between security and development, or the problems of migration. They mostly refer to regional or even local problems.