Publication activity of Russian researchers: academic science

This article is the result of the ongoing research of Russian researchers publication activity at the current stage of Russian science development. The article discusses the actual issues regarding the publication activity of the leading universities. The aim of the study is to analyze the number of publications in scientific journals indexed in Web of Science produced by the Russian researchers from the leading universities, and the distribution of publications by scientific areas (according to the Web of Science classification) among the leading Russian universities to identify the main development directions of science in Russia. The following categories of the leading universities were selected as a research object: federal universities; national research universities; universities participating in the “5-100” Russian Academic Excellence Project; classical, federal state budget-funded universities – Lomonosov Moscow state University and St. Petersburg University. In the course of the study, the author analyzed publication activity of the mentioned groups of universities; identified the leading research areas for each group of universities and verified their compliance with the leading global scientific areas and the leading Russian research fronts. The article unfolds the concept of university publication activity and provides a generalized description publication activity for each category of universities over a five year period from 2011 to 2015. The publication activity analysis of leading Russian universities was based on Web of Science Core Collection database by “full account” method that allows to obtain a total publication activity landscape of the Russian academic science. In the context of the study it was not possible to evaluate the universities involvement in the Russian domestic collaborations and international collaborations. The findings confirmed the results earlier obtained by the author: the leading Russian universities are specialized in Russia's traditional monodisciplinary research areas, such as Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics.