Russian Spatial Economics: a Bibliometric Analysis

• Published in: Prostranstvennaâ Èkonomika
• Main Authors: Alexander Nikolaevich Demyanenko, Vadim Nikolaevich Ukrainsky, Nikolay Alexandrovich Demyanenko
• Format: Article
• Language: Russian
• Published: Economic Research Institute of the Far East Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences 2012-09-01
• Subjects: spatial economics; regional economy; economy of the region; scientific schools; scientificdirections; science of science; science-dimension; bibliometric methods
• Online Access: http://spatial-economics.com/eng/images/spatial-econimics/3_2012/SE.2012.3.111-134.Demyanenko.pdf

The article gives a brief overview of bibliometric methods in science studies. In the empirical part of the paper the authors explore the hypothesis that spatial economics, while existing as a relatively independent and developing field of study, remains a fragmented one. A database of publications in the area of spatial economics extracted from the Scientific Electronic Library was used to study several indicators characterizing development dynamics of the field of spatial economics in the last 10–15 years, its level of fragmentation and the corpus of journals favored in the field. Publications were selected for inclusion in the study with three search queries: «regional economy», «economy of the region» and «spatial economics». Using a cross-citation matrix the study revealed and described communications network between leading Russian journals in the field of spatial economics. The authors conclude that studies on spatial economics are very ambiguous and fragmented, in spite of impressive growth rates of domestic publications on this topic