Russia's research output has experienced a "steady decline" over the past decade and the country is now second lowest among the 'BRIC' - Brazil, Russia, India and China - group of nations, according to a report published by Thomson Reuters on Wednesday.
The New Geography of Science: Research and collaboration in Russia found that after reaching a peak in 1994 of just over 29,000 papers, output in Russia declined over the next decade to reach a low of 22,000 in 2006.
A review of literature over a recent five-year period shows Russia produced some 127,000 papers in all fields of science, accounting for 2.6% of the world's papers published in journals indexed by Thomson Reuters. "This is more than Brazil but less than India and far less than China. Looking around the world, Russia's output was also less than Australia and Canada and only slightly more than the Netherlands," said Thomson Reuters in a
press release announcing the report.
"It is sure to come as a surprise to many analysts that Russia now has a formal publication output that is on a par with countries that have a much shorter history of strong research investment," said Jonathan Adams, director of research evaluation at Thomson Reuters. "While other countries have increased their research output, Russia has struggled to maintain its output and even slipped backwards in areas like physics and space science, historically its core strengths."
The study also found that the United States had replaced Germany as the leader in research collaboration with Russia, that China and South Korea have "rapidly increased" scientific partnerships with Russia, and that Russia "shows signs of growth in the neuroscience and behaviour field".
The study is part of the Global Research Report series from Thomson Reuters, which draws on data in Web of Science, available on the Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge platform - the world's biggest citation environment of high quality scholarly literature.
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