Leading in physics, lagging behind in biology: how Russian science is represented in the world

The Krasnoyarsk biophysicist Yegor Zadereev analyzed a selection of the most cited scientists around the world in order to understand how Russian scientists are represented in it, but not personally, but in scientific organizations and areas of science.

To do this, he took two lists - the most cited scientists for the last 25 years, and the most cited scientists for 2020. These lists not only rank all researchers by the number of citations, but also take into account the area of their work: all scientists are divided into 21 large areas of science. To compile the list, the authors used data on more than 8 million scientists extracted from the SCOPUS scientific publications database. The cutoff was for the 2% most cited scientists in each field. As a result, approximately 190,000 scientists were included in both lists. The first list, cited for 25 years, is a kind of cut of mastiness. The second, for 2020, is the current demand and visibility in the world:

“From Russia, 847/959 scientists were included in these lists (the first and the second are separated by a fraction /). It is 0.45 / 0.50% of the total number of scientists. Despite the fact that the growth of 0.05% is not that great, in absolute terms it is just over 100 people (13%). That is, for our representative office, the growth is noticeable, which I optimistically associate with the increased activity of the Russian scientific community. It is clear that 1000 scientists all over the country is a very “golden thousand”.

Let's move on to organizations. In total, 236/259 Russian organizations are mentioned in the lists as places of work for scientists. It is extremely important that in the database of each scientist, only one organization, a conditional main place of work, is indicated as an affiliation. In Russia (and all over the world), the practice of several affiliations is now common, which allows several organizations to report with the same publications. It is clear that active scientists run departments in one place, laboratories elsewhere, and this accumulation of resources (financial, human) allows them to do even more. But in this case, the rule “one scientist - one place of work” works. Almost half of the organizations (113/131) are represented in the list by only one scientist. On the one hand, the increase in the number of organizations in the list of scientists cited in 2020 should be encouraging - the optimistic assumption is confirmed that at the moment the activity and visibility (involvement in world science) of Russian scientists has grown. On the other hand, this increase is mainly due to single hits.

Lists 134/129 of RAS organizations. This is 57/50% of the number of Russian organizations. These institutes employ 406/391 scientists from the lists (48/41% of Russian representatives). What follows from these numbers? Let me remind you that the number of both Russian organizations and scientists working in them in the list of "citations 2020" has grown in comparison with the list of "citations for 25 years." Since the number of RAS organizations and scientists working in them has fallen, it is obvious that the current activity of RAS in comparison with other organizations in the sphere of science and education, if not falling, remains at the same level. That is, there are mastodons, and they keep their level, but active work on noticeable or fashionable topics is going on in other organizations. On the whole, this is not surprising, given that the purposeful vector of state policy is still support for university science.

The same trend is evident in the analysis of leaders' organizations. In first place in both lists of Moscow State University (84/79 scientists). In the first five of the list for 25 years, there are two RAS institutes: after Moscow State University, there is FIAN (27 scientists), then St. Petersburg State University (26 scientists), Ioffe Institute of Physics and Technology (25 scientists) and MIPT (21 scientists). There is no one in the top five of the 2020 list from the Russian Academy of Sciences: in second place is St. Petersburg State University (34), then MIPT (25), Sechenov University (23) and MISIS (23). Many universities significantly improve their positions in the second list (this is clearly seen in the example of UrFU, TSU, TPU, ITMO, Samara University, SUSU). For RAS organizations, this, with rare exceptions, is not observed. By the way, Krasnoyarsk is one of the rare exceptions. In the list of venerable scientists from the KSC SB RAS, there are only three scientists, and in 2020 as many as 8 (this is already getting into the Russian top-30 organizations) (Alexey Khokhlov, and you say interdisciplinary FRCs are not effective). But such rare exceptions do not make a picture for the RAS.

Now let's move on to the directions. I compared the proportion of scientists included in the lists from each direction, around the world and across Russia. The picture is very revealing. We have terribly overloaded physics (46% in Russia versus 10% in the world), chemistry (15% versus 5%) and strategic technologies, in which nanotechnologies and new materials are embedded (13% versus 3%). It would seem that such a domination of cool scientists in such potentially high-tech areas should be pleasing (and expressed in continuous technological breakthroughs), but so far we have not yet seen them. We are totally not represented in clinical medicine (3% versus 38%) and biomedical research (5% versus 13%). However, the rest of biology, social sciences, earth sciences, economics are also less represented on the Russian list than in the world. By the way, when comparing the percentage of excess or shortage of scientists in the lists for 25 years and for 2020, it seems that the bias is starting to straighten out a little. The fact of the bias in the structure of Russian science towards physics-mathematics-chemistry has been known for a long time. Maybe this is not a bad thing. But in the light of the current negative leadership of Russia in the field of mortality from covid, some sad conclusions suggest themselves.

And a few more interesting figures, now connected with the internal scientific cuisine. The importance of selecting the most cited scientists not by direct comparison of their indicators, but across the fields of science is well illustrated by the difference in average citation rates within sciences. I made such an analysis for Russian scientists. I looked at how the total number of citations, the Hirsch index and the place in the ranking among scientists from different fields of science (for the list of cited in 2020) differ. If you work in the field of clinical medicine and want to be in the top 2% of Russian scientists, then on average you should be cited more than 2200 times per year, in the field of chemistry> 600 times, in the field of classical biology> 260 times, you are a philosopher or theologian - 50 citations will be enough. The Hirsch recruited in a year does not differ so radically - from 15 for a clinical physician, to 3 for a philosopher. Nevertheless, these results clearly demonstrate, in principle, a fact known to all specialists in the field of scientometrics - it is impossible to directly compare the indicators of scientists from different fields of science. 500 citations of a conventional agronomist would be much higher than 1000 citations from a molecular biologist.

Interesting were the middle places of "Russian" (now it will become clear why in quotation marks) scientists in the world ranking. The highest places are occupied not by the leading physicists or chemists, but by ... scientists in the field of psychology and cognitive sciences (places in the region of 48963 ± 24956) and economics and business (places in the region of 50774 ± 12218). Physicists, on average, are not at all among the leaders - their place is in the region of 250 thousandth. I looked at the expense of whom psychologists or economists rank so high. In both areas, there are literally a few people in the ranking, and most of them are top foreigners attracted to universities (in fairness, there is one Russian scientist each). It is clear that such a number will not work for physicists. There are hundreds of scientists on the lists of active ones, most of them are Russians, and along with high places there are also lower ones, who, on average, cannot compete with well-known singles.

You can still play a lot and in more detail with these numbers, in fact, the authors of the base have created it for this - some scientometric analyzes. But I will make a short squeeze:

- the share of Russian scientists in the world top 2% in terms of citation is extremely low - only 0.5%;

- the share of Russian scientists (both the number and the number of organizations where they work) among the most cited at the end of 2020 is higher than among the most cited over the past 25 years, which indicates an increase in the activity of Russian science;

- the share of scientists and organizations of the Russian Academy of Sciences when comparing the lists "for 25 years" and "for 2020" decreases, which indicates a more conservative model of the work of these organizations, in comparison with Russian universities;

- in the structure of the representation of Russian science in the top 2%, there is a strong bias in comparison with the rest of the world: there are much more physicists and chemists, and much less doctors, biologists, representatives of the social sciences;

- significant differences in the number of citations by fields of science, which are required to enter the top 2%, once again emphasize the need to take into account the peculiarities of various fields of science when applying scientometrics for decision-making ... "