The keywords for regional economies: Scientometric analysis

Abstract

The Russian economic science is challenged by the issues of representation of national studies in foreign science journals and level of publications in Scopus Q1 periodicals. The author compares the eLibrary.ru keywords related to regional economies to corresponding Elsevier’s JournalFinder data. She attempts to identify unified keywords to be used by Russian researchers in their articles in regional economies. Based on ScienceDirect database search service, the subject pertinancy of the term “region” is specified; the author concludes that it differs from that accepted in the Russian economic science. This conclusion is to explain the existence of publication barriers the Russian authors encounter in the high-rate foreign journals. Several limitations for using keywords in scientometric analysis are also revealed. The problem of term unification is particularly acute in the humanities as the English-language words are often used in their Russified version. The value of the study lies in the suggested methodology of analyzing publications in eLibrary.ru Russian Science Citation Index and Elsevier’s JournalFinder by keywords. Regional terms and word combinations are interesting and valuable for Russian scientists with the wide scope of variations, which would be the subject of further studies in classification and systematization. The scientometric analysis is in its initial phase and is to develop and improve its study instruments.