engleski

Are the social sciences from the European post- socialist countries integrated in the "Western social sciences"?

Social sciences until the end of the 1980s, were divided between Western social sciences or ‘first world social science’ and ‘second world social science’ from the communist countries (Garneau, 1985). Nowdays, all Central and Eastern European post-socialist countries (CEE) are an integral part of the ERA (European Research Area), as EU member states or EU candidate countries. In this research we intend to shed light on the integration of social sciences of European post-socialist countries (N=15 ; 11 EU countries and 4 candidate EU countries) based on publishing and citations account in international/domestic journals. Sample was obtained from the Scopus database, and it consists of social science papers with at least one of the authors having an address from one of the 15 European post-socialist countries: 11 EU members states: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Croatia, and 4 EU candidate countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. Analysed papers (N=33.837) were published in 2587 international and 157 CEE journals (from sampled countries) in the period 1996-2013 and reclassified according to the Croatian science classification which was based on OECD classification fields (economics, education, information and communication science, law, political science, psychology, sociology, and 3 interdisciplinary fields). Results indicate a gradual integration of European post-socialist social sciences in Western social sciences. Significant increase occurs after the most of CEE countries joined the EU in 2004. Political science, information science and interdisciplinary social sciences are fields that are frontrunners in this integration. CEE countries that are most oriented towards international journals are small CEE countries and Hungary.

social sciences, bibliometric analysis, post-socialist EU countries, international journals

nije evidentirano