LANGUAGE ORIENTATION OF ACADEMIC COMMUNITY IN SOCIOLOGY
Project Coordinator: Daniel Alexandrov
This research is performed within the international network project «Mapping the social sciences and humanities research capacities in Europe and the NIS: developing methodological approaches», with the participation of colleagues from Estonia, Lithuania, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. The analysis of contemporary standards of scientific citations in articles and qualification papers (diplomas) in sociology and political science was conducted. The project aims to develop methods for the analysis of scientific potential in many countries of the former USSR, and, above all, the potential from the point of view of involvement in the global scientific community and readiness to work and international cooperation at the level of contemporary research.
The analysis of frequency of use and citation of scientific literature (primarily of articles in scientific journals) in foreign languages was chosen as a method of assessing the readiness for international cooperation. This approach was tested on an array of scientific publications and qualification works in sociology and political science for five years (2002 - 2007) in six countries of the former Soviet Union (Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Estonia and Lithuania). In all countries, except Russia, all publications in sociology and political science over the past five years and all of the qualification papers that were defended during this period have been analyzed. In Russia, three cases for the study were selected: sociology department of a big and prestigious state university, department of sociology and political science in a small private research university, department of sociology in a St. Petersburg branch of a large Moscow university.
The study shows that countries of the former Soviet Union differ greatly in language preferences: Estonia and Lithuania predominantly cite English-language literature, with no Russian language citations, scientists from Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan cite mostly Russian-speaking scientific literature and use very little English sources, Georgia is located between these two these extremes. None of these countries cite German and French literature. There was also studied the relationship between patterns of citation of students and their teachers. Individual-level correlations are weak, but when we compare different universities it turns out that the relationship between patterns of scientific citation among all students and all teachers is very strong. It shows the influence of academic environment and the existance of institutional norms of citation.
