Scientometric analysis of research on political sciences: authors, magazines, topics, citation (based on WoS)

Abstract

The absence of quantitative data on published researches in political science preconditioned writing this work. The objective of the research was to study publications in political sciences using bibliometric analysis. Articles in political science published within the period of time from 1970 to 2018 have been separated from the database of the Web of Science (as of March 15, 2018). The acquired records have been analyzed according to the citation characteristics, with publications divisioned depending on the language, country, journal and author. There have been found over 222,5 thousand articles in total, which have been published in various peer-viewed journals. From 2007 to 2017 there was observed a significant increase in the number of articles published on this topic.
Most articles are written in English (87.7%), with the United States of America being the leading country in terms of the total number of articles published (over 80 thousand, 35.3%). There is no obvious leader among journals with regard to the number of publications, but four publishers (ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL WEEKLY; NEW REPUBLIC; NEW SOCIETY and NATION) publish the majority of articles on this topic (over 15%) in aggregate. The analysis of the most cited publications allows dividing topics for research into three clusters: election as a part of the political process; transformation of political regimes; global influences and interactions. This research provides a systematic review of efficiency and ostensiveness of research work in the field of political sciences. Conclusions can be used for organizing and determining priorities of future research in political science.