Articles

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.

Beyond a substantial increase in LS following the transition to VET, we find no significant average effect of VET-related migration on apprentices’ LS. However, we observe significant effect heterogeneity: migration to enter higher-status (versus lower-status) occupations and migration to urban (versus rural) regions yield larger (short-term) LS gains for apprentices. These results suggest that, beyond strictly VET-related factors, age-specific lifestyle amenities, which become accessible by moving towards urban regions, moderate the effects of internal migration on LS. Overall, our study illustrates the need to consider the specificity of life stages and coupled life events when analysing the effects of migration on LS.

We find that study resources and private resources (especially personal resources such as high self-efficacy) are substantially negatively correlated with the student burnout risk. While the burnout risk differs only slightly by social background, it is notably higher among women than among men, primarily because women consider their study demands to be higher and their personal resources to be lower. Overall, our study illustrates that social groups differ in terms of perceived study demands and resources—and therefore require tailored support to reduce the risk of burnout.

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.