Economic science in Russia through the lens of publications of Russian economists in national and international journals over 2000-2009

Abstract

The paper focuses on the current state of economic science in Russia with a particular emphasis on the role of Russian journals in accumulation and dissemination of knowledge. We compare important quantitative characteristics of Russian and international journals in the field of economics. We also attempt to establish correspondences between the impact-factor of the Russian Science Citation Index on the one hand and the impact-factors of RePEc and Web of Science databases on the other hand. Using the EconLit database we analyze publications of Russian economists, who can be regarded, according to a number of criteria, as most active researchers, in international journals. Among our main conclusions are low quality of Russian economic journals and low recognition of them in the world, a limited number of Russian economists who are actively publishing in international journals, with most of them concentrated in few institutions such as New Economic School, Central Economics and Mathematics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Higher School of Economics. Overall, our analysis confirms the widely held view that economic science in Russia is progressing rather slowly and remains poorly integrated into the world’s science.