A comparative analysis of scientific outputs of countries formed from former Yugoslav republics and some other countries for the period 2008 – 2012

Scientific outputs of six countries (republics of the former Yugoslavia – the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia): Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Montenegro were discussed in this paper. For the purpose of comparison, the data for seven neighbouring countries of the former Yugoslavia (Albania, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Austria and Italy) were given as well. Also, the data for the Group of Eight (G8) countries (the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, Japan and the Russian Federation) and some European countries similar in population to ex-Yugoslav republics were included. To gain a more complete picture on the outputs in scientific production (e.g., publications and patents), data on several developed European countries, as well as the countries from other continents were given. The analysis, which included 33 countries, was made based on different bibliometric indicators for the period of five years (2008–2012). The data were collected from international databases.


INTRODUCTION
Bibliometric analysis is a useful method for the characterization of scientific research.It provides the best available measures of scientific "output" by the world's countries.There are plenty of articles devoted to the scientific production of individual countries in the literature.][3] However, a small amount of data on scientific outputs of the countries arising from the former Yugoslav republics can be found.

AND DISCUSSIONS
The data on population, GDP (gross domestic product) per capita, as well as the research and development expenditure for 33 selected countries for the period 2008-2012 are given in Table I.Of all given countries, Montenegro has the smallest population (0.620 million) and China the largest (1,337,689 million).GDP per capita, as a measure of the level of economic development of a country, ranges from US $ 1,326 (India) to 91,701 (Norway).It is evident that the former Yugoslav republics, except Croatia and Slovenia, compared with other countries have low gross domestic product per capita.Such a low GDP per capita can also be seen for the three neighbouring countries of ex--Yugoslavia (Albania, Bulgaria and Romania).Therefore, a conclusion, based on the data given, is that the Balkan countries are the least developed ones.
In the same table (the fifth column), data on the gross domestic expenditure on research and development, as a percentage of GDP, are given (R&D expenditure).According to the presented figures for all countries, the lowest research and development expenditure was recorded in Albania (0.15 %) and the highest in Finland (3.84 %).As for the countries formed from the former Yugoslavia, the highest R&D expenditure is in Slovenia and Croatia, while in other countries (former Yugoslav republics), it is less than 0.5 %.These data correlate well with the scientific outputs in these countries.The inadequate budget for R&D with the already lowest gross national income per capita inevitably reflects in the modest productivity of researchers in these countries.Also, the inadequate budget (less than 1 % of GDP) can be seen in most neighbouring countries of the former Yugoslavia (Albania, Bulgaria, Romania and Greece).Poland and India form a group of countries with GDP less than 1 %.Slovenia, Hungary, Italy, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Portugal, the Russian Federation, Canada, Brazil, and China belong to the group of countries with GDP between 1 and 2 %.The countries spending between 2 and 3 % of GDP on R&D are Austria, Finland, Switzerland, France, Germany and the USA, while Sweden, Finland, the Republic of Korea and Japan spend more than 3 % of GDP.
Table II compares the total number of publications and their citations for all studied countries over the study period.Citation, however, is not a direct measure of the quality and the academic significance of an article but reflects its visibility and impact on the scientific community 16,17 .The highest citation in the case of Serbia 5 is connected with the articles that were products of international cooperation with corresponding authors with no address in Serbia.The articles co--authored by at least one researcher from Serbia in 2006-2013, cited more than 300 times (in total, eight articles), are characterized by the number of co-authors usually more than 10, but the first and the corresponding author are not from Serbia. 5 For a better comparison, the ratio of citations to the number of publications (calculated by dividing data from column 4 by those from column 3) is given in column 5. Of all 6 countries emerged from the former Yugoslavia, the highest citations/publication ratio has Slovenia.Also, the ratios of these countries are much lower than those of the others.Such low ratios are noticed for Albania, Romania, the Russian Federation, India and China.In the same table (next to the last column), the data on self-citation are gathered as well, given in percent.Self--citations range from 10.4 % (Albania) to 54.38 % (China).All high-quality papers have been published in international journals and in English.A lot of countries have their own journals in their native languages.Therefore, the articles of most researchers from these countries have been published in their own language; examples are China and the Russian Federation.According to the Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI), a bibliographic database of scientific publications in Russian established in 2005, the total number of publications in Russia, between 2008 and 2012, is 6,829,000.RSCI accumulates more than 20 million publications of Russian authors, as well as the information about citing these publications from more than 5,000 Russian journals (only 154 of them included in Web of Science in 2014) 18 .This explains high self-citations in these countries.Hence, preferential US citing of US papers is not a surprising thing.
The last column in Table II contains Hirsch index (H-index) data for each studied country.H-indices go from 23 (Montenegro) to 1,518 (the US).Among the countries arose from the former Yugoslavia, the highest H-index have Slovenia and Croatia.The ranking of the studied countries according to the H-index is given in parentheses.As evident, at the very top is the US (H = 1,518) and on the bottom Montenegro (H = 23).All G8 countries have high H-index and are ranked from 1 to 7. The exception is Russia with H-index of 18.
It is useful to compare the scientific output (number of publications) with the number of inhabitants and the number of researches in particular country.Table III (column 3) provides the number of researchers per million inhabitants for all studied countries, for the period 2008-2012.As evident, the lowest number of researchers has India (137) and the highest has Finland (7,685).In the case of the former Yugoslav republics, the lowest number of researchers (217) has Bosnia and Herzegovina and the highest has Slovenia (3,653).All G8 countries, as well as the EU ones have high number of researchers/millions of inhabitants.Albania, with 147 researchers/millions of inhabitants, is according to this criterion, closely behind India.
In the same table, column 4, data on the number of publications per 1000 inhabitants are given, while the column 5 in the same table contains the data on the number of publications per researcher.The data given in these two columns enable comparison of all countries according to the uniform criteria.Of all countries studied, the number of publications per 1000 inhabitants is the lowest for India (0.33) and Albania (0.34).The highest number of publications per 1000 inhabitants can be observed for Switzerland (21.7).The G8 countries, apart from Russia, have high number of publications per 1000 inhabitants.This indicator ranges from 6.80 (Italy) to 21.7 (Switzerland).The number of publications per 1000 inhabitants for the countries formed from the former Yugoslavia goes from 0.87 (Bosnia and Herzegovina) to 12.0 (Slovenia).Only for Slovenia and Croatia this number is higher than 6, while in the case of other countries it is lower than 5. Albania, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary, the neighbouring countries of the former Yugoslavia, have low number of publications per 1000 inhabitants (< 5).This ratio for China is also low (1.25) in contrast to all developed countries that have high number of publications per 1000 inhabitants.
As for the number of publications per researcher (Table III 1081 erland (6.55) in the lead.The number of publications per researcher for the countries emerged from the former Yugoslavia ranges from 2.08 (Montenegro) to 4.16 (Croatia).Contrary to the previous criteria, the data based on this one, for all studied countries, do not vary greatly.One should have in mind that we took the account of the total number of publications making no distinction in quality between them, i.e., impact factors of journals in which these papers were published.Table III, columns 6 and 7, compares the data on the gross domestic expenditure on research and development per capita (column 6) and per researcher (column 7), for each studied country.The lowest R&D expenditure per capita is evident for Albania (US $ 6) and the highest for Switzerland (US $ 2,196).For the countries formed from ex-Yugoslav republics, the highest expenditure can be seen for Slovenia (US $ 451) and Croatia (US $ 116), and the lowest for Bosnia and Herzegovina (US $ 15).The other countries (Serbia, FYR Macedonia and Montenegro) have very low R&D expenditure per capita.Concerning other countries, R&D expenditure per capita in India is also very low (US $ 11).The G8 countries as well as other developed countries spend significant amounts (from several hundred to several thousand US $) on R&D per capita.This certainly results in top research productivity and quality in these countries.The last column of Table III presents the data on R&D expenditure (in US $) per researcher.A comparison shows that, of all countries formed from the former Yugoslavia, the lowest R&D expenditure can be noted for Serbia and the highest for Slovenia.According to the data for all studied countries, the R&D expenditure per researcher is the lowest in Serbia (US $ 1.90×10 4 ) and the highest in Switzerland (US $ 66.2×10 4 ).In high-developed countries, G8, the expenditure is high as expected starting from US $ 17.2×10 6 -30.5×10 6 .The exception is Russia with expenditure of US $ 4.31×10 4 .
Table IV (column 3) shows the data on the number of patents for all selected countries in the period between 2008 and 2012.Montenegro is the only country in which no patent was filed in this period.The number of patents filed ranges from 1 (Albania) to 1,146,059 (the US).For a better comparison of these data, the numbers of patents per million inhabitants are given in column 4 of the same table.Of all countries, which came into being from the former Yugoslavia, the highest number of patents per million inhabitants can be seen for Slovenia (73.4) and Croatia (19.5).For other countries of the same group, the figures are more than modest and range from 0 (Montenegro) to 4.2 (Serbia).Neighbouring countries of the former Yugoslavia have also a modest number of patents per million inhabitants -Albania (0.32) and Romania (5.32).Low numbers of patents per million inhabitants are also evident for India (4.59) and Brazil (5.17).All G8 countries, apart from the Russian Federation (with 9.25), have high number of patents per million inhabitants, going from 180 (Italy) to 3,707 (the US).All high-developed countries have high number of patents per million inhabitants.
This indicator confirms the technological level of a country.It should be mentioned that, besides the US, the following countries have more than 1000 patents per million inhabitants: Switzerland (1,105), the Republic of Korea (1,177) and Japan (1,745).
Finally, the data on the number of universities among the world top 500 ones (in 2012 and 2015) for all selected countries are given in columns 5 and 6, Table IV  The list of ranked universities has been regularly updated and released by the Shanghai Institute of Education.Ranking is based on the number of staff winning Nobel Prizes, number of highly cited researchers, articles published in journals of Science and Nature, as well as on the number of articles published.These criteria are compared with the number of full-time staff members in each institution the university is composed of (collages and institutes).Among the countries formed from the former Yugoslavia, only Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia had 1 university

TABLE IV .
Number of patents, patents per million inhabitants from 2008 to 2012, and academic ranking of world universities, according to: ARWU -The Academic Ranking of World Universities; Top 500 universities Shanghai ranking-2012.mht;Top 500 universities Shanghai Ranking-2015.mht;www.uspto.gov/go/taf/cst_all.htm