Impact of national science policy on academic migration and research productivity in Russia

Abstract The impressive growth of research productivity of Russian organizations in the recent years is not accompanied by the corresponding increase in funding and occurred on the background of drop of number of R & D personnel according to state statistics. There is no definitive explanation of the nature of this phenomenon at the moment. This study is based on the detailed analysis of bibliometric data of Scopus database. Attribution of Russian authors’ affiliations to the main sectors of Russian science as well as to the economic regions of Russian Federation and fractional counting allowed us to track the trends in sectoral and territorial structure of Russian science. We revealed that the increase in the number of Russian publications is primarily caused by the outpacing increase in the number of authors. We suppose that this increase is related mainly to the high human resources capacity in the sector of higher education. Reforms of Russian science sector and changes in national science policy have drastically changed the shape and structure of Russian science that have been resulted in increased numbers of university faculty members involved in research and publishing activity. A more thorough study of the state of human resources and academic mobility is necessary for an enhanced understanding of nature of the processes and perspectives of Russian science development.