Publications

Co-authored by Vasily Nalimov and Zinaida Mulchenko, Naukometriya (1969) introduced the term that came to name the field of scientometrics. However, the book itself had limited impact on the development of the field outside the Eastern Bloc. This paper examines how problems of translation shaped the global circulation of one of scientometrics’ foundational texts. We reconstruct the history of the book’s only English version, a 1971 machine translation produced with the Systran system for the U.S. Air Force, and assess its quality using the Multidimensional Quality Metrics framework.

This paper examines the relationship between John Desmond Bernal (1901–1971) and the Soviet approach to organize scientific information, focussing on the establishment of the All-Union Institute of Scientific and Technological Information (VINITI).

Hostility towards science has emerged as a significant challenge in contemporary science communication, particularly in increasingly politicised and digitally mediated public environments. Scholars across diverse disciplines are confronted with harassment, delegitimisation, political interference, disinformation, and personal attacks, especially when engaging in public communication. This editorial introduces the JCOM commentary set “Scholars Under Attack” and situates hostility towards science within broader transformations of media ecosystems, political polarisation, and contested epistemic authority.

In this commentary, we examine patterns of attacks against scholars focusing on the case of Germany. Drawing on the responses to open and closed questions in a recent survey of 2,600 German researchers, we identify context- and field-specific patterns of science hostility. While most responding researchers do not experience severe attacks, those engaged in specific fields may be at a higher risk of being threatened. We argue that attacks on researchers may not be perceived as acts of hostility against scientific institutions but rather emerge in the context of controversial topics.

Nacaps, the National Academics Panel Study, is a longitudinal study of doctoral candidates and doctorate holders in Germany funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) until 2024. The project aims at providing nationwide cross-sectional and longitudinal data on doctoral candidates and doctorate holders in Germany regarding their study conditions as well as their career trajectories within and outside of academia. The Nacaps study series apply a panel design to multiple cohorts. [...] Full Abstract: https://doi.org/10.21249/DZHW:nac2020:1.0.0