Global Race for Scientific Leadership and the Place of Russia: Results of Scientometric Assessment

Introduction. The global scientific landscape has changed over the past 30 years. Geopolitical shifts of recent decades have contributed to the formation of new growth poles. The objective of the study is to assess the global geography of scientific knowledge growth as a marker of scientific leadership and determination of Russia’s place. Materials and Methods. The study is based on the spatial scientometrics approach using data from the Scopus international abstract database. This made it possible to conduct a spatio-temporal analysis of the distribution of scientific publications for geographic regions of different levels (from 1990 to November 2024). A total of 247 countries and territories were taken into account. Results. It is shown that the greatest contribution to the global indicators of the number of scientific publications was made by four mesoregions – North America, East Asia, Western and Northern Europe. It was determined that the European and American scientific systems significantly surpass the Asian one in terms of productivity. Urbanization has become a competitive factor on a macro-regional scale for the intensification of scientific activity. After 2010, a transition to a polycentric structure of the global scientific system was revealed with the formation of three most influential centers of scientific knowledge growth: European, Asian and American. First of all, China became stronger. Russia’s average annual contribution to the global publication volume is comparable to Africa. However, after 2022, a decline in publication activity was noted, which is associated with geopolitical turbulence. Discussion and Conclusion. It is expected that the preservation of the international scientific influence of the Russian Federation is associated with the development of scientific and technical cooperation with friendly countries (primarily China as a new world leader in science). The applied value of the study lies in the possibility of using the obtained results in the field of assessment and management of science. The article provides a solid scientific ground for understanding the spatial patterns of concentration of the world scientific potential and creates a basis for forecasting the geographical trajectories of its development. This article will be useful for specialists in the field of geography of knowledge, spatial scientometrics and regional economics.