International collaboration of Ukrainian scholars: Effects of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine

TL;DR

This paper examines how Russia's invasion affected Ukrainian scholars' international collaboration, revealing increased collaboration for universities, unchanged rates for NASU, and varying citation impacts across disciplines during 2022-2023.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of Ukrainian scholars' international collaboration patterns and citation impacts during the invasion period.

Findings

University international collaboration increased in 2022-2023.

NASU's international collaboration remained stable.

Citation impact for university publications improved.

Abstract

This study explores the effects of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on the international collaboration of Ukrainian scholars. First and foremost, Ukrainian scholars deserve respect for continuing to publish despite life-threatening conditions, mental strain, shelling and blackouts. In 2022-2023, universities gained more from international collaboration than the NASU. The percentage of internationally co-authored articles remained unchanged for the NASU, while it increased for universities. In 2023, 40.8% of articles published by the NASU and 32,2% of articles published by universities were internationally co-authored. However, these figures are still much lower than in developed countries (60-70%). The citation impact of internationally co-authored articles remained statistically unchanged for the NASU but increased for universities. The highest share of internationally co-authored articles published by the NASU in both periods was in the physical sciences and engineering. However, the citation impact of these articles declined in 2022-2023, nearly erasing their previous citation advantage over university publications. Universities consistently outperformed the NASU in the citation impact of internationally co-authored articles in biomedical and health sciences across both periods. International collaboration can help Ukrainian scholars to go through this difficult time. In turn, they can contribute to the strengthening of Europe.