Abstract
This study decomposes country-specific deviations in the share of Conference Papers (CPs) in national research output from the global average into two components: disciplinary and institutional shifts. This approach helps explain the high proportion of CPs in certain countries, where the disciplinary structure of national science justifies such deviations. We propose that the main drivers of institutional shifts include national science policy, particularly performance assessment systems; a high proportion of early-career researchers due to rapid expansion of the research sector; and the prevalence of home conferences, influenced by favorable geographical locations or political preferences. We observed an abnormally low institutional shift in Iran, which has long been under international sanctions, and an extremely high shift in Indonesia, where the rapid development of the scientific sector leads to a high proportion of first-time authors and relaxed scientific ethics requirements. The impact of excessive publication pressure is also evident in post-Soviet countries undergoing transformations in their scientific systems.
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Acknowledgements
This is an extended and revised version of a preliminary conference report that was presented in 27th International Conference on Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators, STI 2023 (Guskov & Kosyakov, 2023). The research leading to these results received funding from Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation under the basic research project FZFM-2022-0001.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Data collection and analysis were performed by DK. Graphical visualizations and analysis were performed by AG. The first draft of the manuscript was written by AG, revised and updated by DK. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Kosyakov, D., Guskov, A. Disciplinary and institutional shifts: decomposing deviations in the country-level proportions of conference papers in Scopus. Scientometrics 129, 1697–1717 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-024-04943-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-024-04943-2