Russia-affiliated scholars publishing about internationalisation of higher education

A quantitative investigation based on Scopus

Giorgio Comai
Last updated on 2025-02-02 6 min read Research notes

DOI for this research note: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14791245

Objective of this research note

Outline trends in the publication record of Russia-affiliated scholars writing about internationalisation of higher education and publishing their work in established scholarly journals.

Operationalisation of the objective

Rely on the Scopus API to search for all articles published:

  • between 2011 and 2024
  • in the following subject area ‘SOCI’
  • matching in either the title, the abstract, or the author-provided article keywords the following string: ‘higher education’
    • considering other criteria for narrowing further the number of results in subsequent steps
  • in any Scopus-indexed journal
    • considering the option to limit results to top ranked journals (e.g. Q1 and Q2)

Additional notes clarifying some of these choices

  • Why set 2011 as the start date?
    • data availability: according to the official Scopus website, journal CiteScore data are effectively available only starting with 2011; as CiteScore is used for filtering Q1 and Q2 publications, this criteria could scarcely be consistenyly applied retroactively (“the first journal metric values for CiteScore are available for 2011” - https://service.elsevier.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/29859/)
    • relevance: the focus is on policies favouring internationalisation of higher education that gained traction in Russia mostly in the 2010s
    • pragmatic considerations: in previous years, the number of publications focused on higher education by Russia-affiliated scholars is anyway negligible
  • Why set only SOCI as the subject area?
    • pragmatic considerations: a separate test including also “ECON” and “ARTS” has been conducted; the number of additional unique matches was limited, and often less relevant
    • clarity: an explicit focus on social sciences Scopus-indexed journals enhances clarity in the case selection
  • Why rely only on “higher education” as keyword?
    • pragmatic considerations: additional contiguous keywords, such as “university”, brought in a large number of spurious matching; domain-specific keywords (e.g. “Bologna process”) may have skewed results; ultimately, if an article really focuses on internationalisation of higher education it is strongly expected that it will use that expression in either title, abstract, or user-selected keywords
  • Why only journal publications, and not e.g. book chapters?
    • pragmatic considerations: focusing on journal articles allows to differentiate publications based on ranking

Data retrieval

The data was downloaded from Scopus API in January 2025 via api.elsevier.com and www.scopus.com.

See:

Differentiate articles

Articles are differentiated based on a set of criteria:

  • articles with at least an author with a Russian affiliation?
  • articles published in Q1 and Q2 journals VS all Scopus-indexed publications
  • articles that are specifically about internationalisation of higher education, base on a narrow or slightly broader set of criteria.

The same analysis and graphs will be reproduced based on each set of criteria.

Table 1: Share of Scopus-indexed journal articles mentioning higher education in either title, abstract, or keyword; Russian affiliation recorded if at least one co-author has a Russian affiliation.
year All No Russian affiliation Russian affiliation Russian affiliation share
2011 4073 4057 16 0.39%
2012 4399 4341 58 1.32%
2013 4991 4941 50 1.00%
2014 5450 5328 122 2.24%
2015 6126 5837 289 4.72%
2016 6481 6134 347 5.35%
2017 7115 6802 313 4.40%
2018 8287 7829 458 5.53%
2019 9915 9373 542 5.47%
2020 11552 11014 538 4.66%
2021 12404 11894 510 4.11%
2022 13497 13041 456 3.38%
2023 14666 14200 466 3.18%
2024 18532 18142 390 2.10%
Table 2: Share of Q1 and Q2 Scopus-indexed journal articles mentioning higher education in either title, abstract, or keyword; Russian affiliation recorded if at least one co-author has a Russian affiliation.
year All No Russian affiliation Russian affiliation Russian affiliation share
2011 1595 1594 1 0.06%
2012 1797 1788 9 0.50%
2013 2130 2124 6 0.28%
2014 2143 2134 9 0.42%
2015 2376 2362 14 0.59%
2016 2608 2595 13 0.50%
2017 2994 2956 38 1.27%
2018 3672 3588 84 2.29%
2019 4317 4139 178 4.12%
2020 5426 5169 257 4.74%
2021 6197 5901 296 4.78%
2022 7350 7076 274 3.73%
2023 8556 8267 289 3.38%
2024 11344 11117 227 2.00%

Two approaches for keeping only articles about internationalisation of higher education

Analysis based only on articles that explicitly refer to internationalisation of higher education (narrower criteria)

In order to capture only articles that explicitly focus on internationalisation of higher education, this section is based only on articles that match the following criteria:

  • the full string “internationali(s|z)ation of higher education” is present in either title or abstract
  • the author-provided keywords include both “higher education” and “internationali(s|z)ation”

This leads to a significantly reduced set of publications.

Table 3: Total number of publications based on the narrow criteria
Property Value
Total publications 1919
Publications with Russia-affiliated authors 70

Universities with most publications (narrower criteria)

Table 4: Institutions with most publications and most citations based on narrower criteria
afid Number of publications Cited affilname affiliation-city affiliation-country
60016849 16 816 University of Toronto Toronto Canada
60017919 40 772 The Education University of Hong Kong Hong Kong China
60031117 13 733 Boston College Chestnut Hill United States
60010365 16 517 The University of British Columbia Vancouver Canada
60006541 28 463 The University of Hong Kong Hong Kong Hong Kong
60031004 11 427 The University of Queensland Brisbane Australia
60006242 17 378 UCL Institute of Education London United Kingdom
60031846 6 358 University of South Australia Adelaide Australia
60019578 13 352 Monash University Melbourne Australia
60005273 6 347 Korea University Seoul South Korea

Table 5: Most cited affiliations in Russia (narrower definition)
Affiliation affiliation-city Publications Cited
HSE University Moscow 8 82
RUDN University Moscow 5 34
Ural Federal University Yekaterinburg 4 28
Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration Moscow 4 26
Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) Moscow 5 23
Far Eastern Federal University Vladivostok 2 23
Plekhanov Russian University of Economics Moscow 2 20
Siberian Federal University Krasnoyarsk 3 20
Saint Petersburg State University Saint Petersburg 5 18
University of Tyumen Tyumen 1 16

Include also articles that mention concepts that are contiguous to internationalisation of higher education (broader criteria)

Rather than keeping only articles that refer to “internationalisation of higer education”, the following section includes also articles that, besides “higher education”, also has one of the following keywords in either title, abstract, or author-given keywords. This list of keyword has been inductively derived from the most frequent terms that appeared in the abstracts meeting the narrower definition.

Table 6: Selected keywords relevant to internationalisation of higher education
keywords
internationalisation
internationalization
foreign students
foreign language
academic mobility
student mobility
international students
bologna process
international education
export of education
world-class universities
Table 7: Share of Scopus-indexed journal articles mentioning higher education AND another internationalisation-related keyword in either title, abstract, or author-given keywords; Russian affiliation recorded if at least one co-author has a Russian affiliation.
year All No Russian affiliation Russian affiliation Russian affiliation share
2011 240 238 2 0.83%
2012 255 251 4 1.57%
2013 332 331 1 0.30%
2014 339 327 12 3.54%
2015 373 338 35 9.38%
2016 462 409 53 11.47%
2017 409 374 35 8.56%
2018 532 459 73 13.72%
2019 630 539 91 14.44%
2020 720 649 71 9.86%
2021 771 689 82 10.64%
2022 833 780 53 6.36%
2023 972 915 57 5.86%
2024 1216 1179 37 3.04%