THE IMPORTANCE OF BIBLIOMETRIC INDICATORS FOR THE ANALYSIS OF RESEARCH PERFORMANCE IN GEORGIA

1. Introduction It is well known that scientific advance is the basis for the economic and cultural development of a country. Therefore objective evaluation of the quality of research activity of scholars, scientific and educational institutions acquires utmost importance among other characteristics necessary to understand a country's present position and its possible future development (Moed 2005, Allik 2008). At the same time, it is necessary to emphasize that the level of scientific progress of the country cannot be estimated simply by the number of people involved in scientific work or by the total of financial funds allocated by the government for the research purposes. According to contemporary scientometric and bibliometric concepts, the main indicator of a country's scientific advance is the number and quality of research works published in leading scientific journals (May 1997, Valencia 2004). Based on these publications, different quantitative characteristics of scientific research productivity, e.g. bibliometric indexes, can be calculated. These indexes are based on counting the number of articles and citations in peer-reviewed international scientific journals. It should be pointed out here that although discussions about the reliability of certain bibliometric indexes are still continuing, practically no one contests that the productivity of scientific research should be evaluated through the analysis of the amount and quality of publications as well as corresponding citation data (Aksnes 2004, Abramo et al. 2008 2009, 2011, Chirici 2012). At present, in many countries around the globe, the importance of evaluating scientific research performance is well recognized. Such data about scientific research productivity helps governmental decision-makers to build long-term strategic plans, answer questions about which research directions should be built in future or which ongoing research activity should be supported in accordance with the economic and political objectives of a country. Moreover, such bibliometric analyses are necessary to understand the country's position relative to global and domestic standards of research quality and production. From this point of view it is understandable why such analysis are carried out not only in leading economically developed countries, but also in many relatively poorer developing countries as well as countries with transitional economy (Allik 2003 2008, Wolszczak-Derlacz and Parteka 2010, Hammouti 2010, Suleymenov et al. 2011). Indeed, governmental funding of research in countries with enormous social, economic or political challenges and restricted amount of available resources should be highly effective, which cannot be achieved without correct bibliometric analyses. For the last decade the evaluation of the productivity of scientific research become common practice in former soviet republics (Allik 2003, 2008, 2013, Suleymenov et al. 2011). Georgia is one of such post-Soviet country with transitional economy. As it follows from the Scopus-Scimago ranking, Georgia is in the ninth ten of the international list of productivity of scientific researches. According to bibliometric indicators, the quality and influence of Georgian scientific research are generally low compared to the majority of former soviet bloc countries and many developing countries. Information contained in the Scopus-Elsevier publications database indicates that articles of authors claiming affiliation in Georgian research organizations rarely appear in internationally recognized journals and the number of citations is rather low (a clear indication of this situation was presented recently by J. Allik (2013) showing that Georgia is among 65 out of the analyzed 148 countries, which does not meet certain criteria of scientific productivity during the last decade). Against this background the objective assessment of scientific productivity of Georgian research institutes, universities and scholars acquires special importance. …