Scientific cooperation of Russia with post-soviet states

Abstract

The article defines the current state and dynamics of the scientific cooperation between Russia and non-Baltic post-Soviet states by studying researchers’ scientific co-publications indexed in the Web of Science. The statistics on the number of Russian and post-Soviet authors’ bilateral scientific articles in 2000–2017 were analyzed, as well as distribution of the articles by publication year, area of research, main sponsors, and authors’ organizational affiliations. Four groups of countries were specified, for which the dynamics of scientific publication cooperation with Russia can be described as growing, positive, stagnating, and dwindling respectively. The main areas of scientific cooperation between Russia and post-Soviet states were identified in general and for each partner country in particular, as well as the leading cooperating organizations, key areas of joint research, and major research sponsors. The comparative relevance of co-publications for the scientific community was evaluated through scientific citation indexes for each post-Soviet partner country and each key area of research. The valuable role of higher education institutions in maintaining scientific cooperation in the context of adverse political and economic environments was specified.