History matters: The inherited disciplinary structure of the post-communist science in countries of central and eastern Europe and its restructuring

The inherited disciplinary structure of the science of post-communist countries of CEE carries a strong common features of its past. The communist heritage is present in: a) a relatively homogeneous research profile among post-communist countries; b) the similar structure of disciplinary comparative advantages of post-communist countries; c) the unbalanced and concentrated disciplinary structure of comparative advantages. The analysis is based on ISI databases and uses statistics on papers and citations for the 1992–1997 period for all central and eastern European countries as well as for other world regions. In the conclusions we discuss the relevance of the results for the restructuring of science in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.