Projects

The improvement of national research systems ranks at the top in the policy agenda of many countries. To pursue such improvements, many nations have adopted performance-based funding, recruitment and promotion systems based on research evaluation. Nowadays the research infrastructure of the RA is in a phase of dramatic changes to increase the research productivity of the state. While the changes for the research institutions are underway, the universities still wait for the changes. The quintessential indicator of research performance is productivity, i.e. the ratio of the value of research output to the cost of research expenditures. Among the various approaches, the one that better approximates the measurement of research productivity is the Fractional Scientific Strength (FSS) indicator developed by the Italian scholars Abramo and D’Angelo. This project aims to apply the FSS indicator to measure research productivity in Armenia at individual, field, discipline, department and institution levels; create the ranking of Armenian universities by their research productivity; identify weak and strong research fields at national level; verify the feasibility of applying the FSS indicator to assess the standing of higher education systems of countries other than Italy.

One of the challenges that Armenia has faced since independence was (and continues to be) the disintegration of the scientific community, which manifests itself in brain drain. This process is expressed in two main ways: 1․ withdrawal from science; 2․ emigration from Armenia. As a result of the second process, the Armenian scientific diaspora has significantly increased at the expense of many researchers from Armenia. From the point of view of RA national security and development, it is very important to preserve the Armenian scientific community and then find a model for its development. One way to do that is to develop a flexible, effective and realistic model for cooperation between Armenia and the Armenian scientific diaspora, which will enable, on the one hand, to develop Armenian science and, on the other hand, create mutually beneficial conditions for cooperation and offer them to Armenian researchers abroad. This research project aims to conduct an inventory of Armenian researchers abroad, assess the current state of cooperation between Armenia and the Armenian scientific diaspora, as well as develop a flexible, effective and realistic model for cooperation between Armenia and the Armenian scientific diaspora based on international experience.

Citation indexes are specialized bibliographic databases that contain descriptions of scientific articles, monographs, patents and other scientific literature. They are used in the world to analyze publication activity and citations of individual scientists, scientific organizations and countries with a view to assess the effectiveness of scientific research.

Similar indexes are being created in many countries, some of which are later combined into unified regional projects. Regional indexes as well as indexes of big countries are further integrated into global scientific databases, the most significant being Web of Science (WOS) and Scopus.

Some examples of national science citation indexes are the Russian Science Citation Index, Chinese Knowledge Resource Integrated Database, Portuguese and Spanish SciELO Citation Index, Korean Journal Data base.

In our region no country has a national science citation index.

Center for Scientific Information Analysis and Mentoring at the Institute for Informatics and Automation Problems, NAS RA has started to develop the Armenian Science Citation Index (ASCI) since 2010 (in Armenian - Գիտական հղումների հայկական ցուցիչ, in Russian - Армянский индекс научного цитирования – АИНЦ. Armenian Science Citation Index - ASCI)

Now the CSIAM is collecting, elaborating and creating relevant databases (for researchers, research articles, scientific organizations, citations, key-word, etc). As a second step these databases will be combined into one online portal. The ASCI will contain information starting from 2007.

The ASCI will become a system for indexing and analyzing scientific journals, activities of scientific organizations and researchers, which will later be integrated into international scientific databases.

The ASCI will increase the visibility of the Armenian science in international scientific platforms.

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The role of women is rapidly changing in different aspects of social life. Gender equality in science has also became an imperative creating more and more interest. Despite some general progress, women are underrepresented in science throughout the world. The aim of this project is to evaluate the role of Armenian women in science. Based on the international and local scientific databases through the use of scientometric indicators this project will analyze the share of Armenian women in science, their involvement and ratio in different scientific disciplines, highlight the more successful Armenian women scientists internationally and locally.

Center for Scientific Information Analysis and Monitoring has presented a project “Eurasian Regional Science Citation Index” to the contest of innovative projects “Eurasian Digital Platforms” organized by the Eurasian Economic Commission in the frames of preparation to the forum “Eurasian Week-2018”.

The aim of the contest is to identify companies and projects that can make a significant contribution to the development of the Integrated Information System of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), taking into account the main directions of the digital agenda of the EAEU.

The project mobilizes the efforts of four EAEU countries (Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia) to develop a united index of science citation for the EAEU, which will mark the formation of global cooperation in the field of science and education management to create a unified digital information and analytical science space among the EAEU member-states.

Citation indexes are specialized bibliographic databases that contain descriptions of scientific articles, monographs, dissertations, patents and other scientific literature. They are used in the world to analyze publication activity and citations of individual scientists, scientific organizations and countries with a view to assess the effectiveness of scientific research.

Similar indexes are being created in many countries, some of which are later combined into unified regional projects. Regional indexes as well as indexes of big countries are further integrated into global scientific databases, the most significant being Web of Science (WOS).

On the basis of the Institute of Informatics and Automation Problems of the National Academy of Sciences our Center has been working on the development of the Armenian Science Citation Index (ASCI) since 2010. It is supposed that ASCI will cover all scientific periodicals and other scientific publications of the Republic of Armenia. The purpose of this project is the further integration of ASCI into international scientific databases.

Within the framework of this project, the Eurasian Regional Science Citation Index (ERSCI) of the EAEU countries will be developed. An initiative project, combining national science citation indexes of the three countries, has been implemented since 2014 by a team of specialists from Russia, Armenia and Belarus. This year, the National Center for State Scientific and Technical Expertise of the Republic of Kazakhstan joined the project.

The project is open for other post-Soviet countries to join.

ERSCI should become one of the most important components of the unified information network of science and education of the EAEU member-states.

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On January 1, 2015, the Republic of Armenia joined the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union having an alternative to sign an Association Agreement with the European Union. Using bibliometric method, we will quantitatively analyze international collaboration publication output of the Republic of Armenia with the member-states of the European Union and the Eurasian Economic Union based on the databases of Web of Science and Russian Science Citation Index to see whether the political decision to join Eurasian Economic Union responds to the scientific reality.

This proposal is a two-stage project. During the first practical stage our group will carry out data cleaning of the Armenian Scholars, Scientific organizations and the Armenian place names in the Web of Science database (WOS). Based on the obtained results, the group will implement a deep and comprehensive scientometric analysis of the Armenian science starting from 1991; analyze international collaborations of the Armenian scholars, scientific groups and organizations; study dynamics of the Armenian science development based on scientific fields and disciplines; develop informational and analytical basis to access the efficiency of financing science in Armenia. Data from the Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI) and the Armenian Science Citation Index (ASCI) will also be used along with the cleaned databases of WOS.

For the objective assessment of the scientific situation in Armenia there is a need to establish a system that will consider the number of publications, citations received by the Armenian authors as well as publications in Armenian, Russian and foreign journals.  For the analysis of the publications in foreign and translated Russian journals we can use the SCI, Scopus and RINC (Russian index of scientific citation) databases, while for the Armenian journals there is a necessity to create the analogous system for journal indexing and bibliographic analysis. As a result the Armenian index of scientific citation-AINC- will be created.

Within the framework of the present project the Armenian side will facilitate the inclusion of the Armenian journals in the Russian index of scientific citation.

As a result of rejoining data from AINC and RINC, the assessment of the Armenian scholars and scientific organizations will be performed, considering also their publications and citations from RINC.

Financed by the European Commission within the TEMPUS program ARMAZEG project aims to stimulate educational reform in Armenian and Georgian partner universities by establishing e-Learning centers and training involved staff members – with special attention to lifelong learning methodologies.