Scientific productivity and cooperation in Turkic world: a bibliometric analysis

Abstract

The main purpose of this study is to gain insight about scientific productivity and cooperation among Turkish language speaking countries in today's conditions in which scientific cooperation has gained ever-increasing significance. The basic problematic of the current research is as follows: although scientific production and cooperation has gained a strategic importance and bibliometric studies have become popular on scientific production processes with reference to the number of academic publications and citations, academic studies on this field have not been carried out yet in Turkish language speaking countries. In the current study, a bibliometric analysis was done with reference to co-authored scientific documents and citations between 2000 and 2016 years in the countries being a member of "Turkic Council" which is one of the main international organizations aiming to institutionalize scientific cooperation in Turkic world. In the analyses obtained from Web of Science, the following phenomena were highlighted the number of academic documents, the number of citations, the number of academic documents per academic staff, the number of academic documents per institutions, the impact factors of the studies, the main research fields, the number of co-authored academic studies which the member countries carried out together and with the other countries and finally the languages used in these academic studies. The basic research question in the present research focuses on what kind of evolution appeared in the number of academic documents, their impact factors, coauthoring matter and their main research fields in Turkic Council member countries. The essential findings of this interdisciplinary study in which scientific research statistics of the member countries are presented in analyses along with geopolitical descriptions can be listed as follows; Turkey is the main research partner of Turkic Council member countries, Turkey has still kept its preliminary role in the process of scientific cooperation in Turkic world together with the end of the cold war, the other member countries except for Turkey have fallen behind considerably in the rank of publication and citation performance, the scientific cooperation among other member countries has not been activated yet despite the institutional moves of the Council, the use of Turkish language in the examined documents is rather scarce although Turkey occupies the scientific preliminary position and the Council is an international organization which is shaped under the framework of common language axis.