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This article investigates the evolving dynamics of global scientific production and collaboration from 2000 to 2022, focusing on the impact of geopolitical changes on academic freedom and international research collaboration. Historically dominated by Western liberal democracies, the global scientific landscape has seen a significant shift with the rise of emerging economies, particularly within the BRICS group. This transition reflects broader changes in wealth distribution and scientific output, with China emerging as the largest scientific system. The analysis employs bibliometric indicators and political metrics, including the V-Dem’s Liberal Democracy Index and the Academic Freedom Index, to assess changes in scientific output, academic freedom, and international collaboration. Results reveal a decline in academic freedom and liberal democracy in major science-producing countries, coinciding with increased scientific output from nations with lower academic freedoms. The study also examines international collaboration patterns, highlighting a shift away from traditional Western partners towards increased collaboration within the BRICS group. This shift is particularly evident in the growing partnerships between China, India and Russia. Despite the increased scientific output from these countries, Western countries, particularly the USA and European nations, remain pivotal in global scientific networks. In summary, the findings suggest a move towards a more multipolar scientific world, where the balance of power is shifting away from traditional Western hegemony. However, this shift comes with significant challenges, particularly concerning the erosion of academic freedom in many of the expanding scientific regions.

This study examines the sex productivity gap among doctoral students in Sweden using a comparative design. It focuses particularly on how the gap increases at the higher end of the productivity distribution, with men consistently publishing more than women. The study is based on a large dataset of 10,804 doctoral students who graduated between 2010 and 2019 in the research areas of the natural sciences, engineering and technology, medical and health sciences, and the social sciences. By applying multiple quantile regression analysis, we were able to conduct a nuanced analysis of the sex productivity gap across the whole productivity distribution. Results indicate a consistent productivity gap by sex across all research areas and that the gap increases towards the higher end of the distribution, i.e., the sex differences in productivity increase among the top performers. However, the comparison of research areas revealed some heterogeneity. In engineering and technology, the increasing sex gap levels off in the middle of the distribution but takes a leap at the extreme tail. In the social sciences, the gap peaks just before the extreme end of the distribution and then starts decreasing. The natural sciences and medical and health sciences show a more gradual increase in the gap towards the higher end. Taking into account the Swedish context – with its widespread adoption of the collective model of doctoral education and the thesis-by-publication format – our main conclusions are: (1) there exists a consistent sex productivity gap across all studied research areas, and (2) the increasing sex gap at the upper end of the productivity distribution, commonly seen in later career stages, can already be observed during doctoral studies. 

The Antarctic Research Trends Report 2025 analyzes global patterns in Antarctic and Southern Ocean (ASO) academic publishing from 2016 to 2024, using Scopus data.

This report aims to provide an update to the two studies published in 2016 and 2017 (Osipov et al 2016 & 2017) with the primary task of assessing the global funding landscape around Arctic-related research. While the previous reports were focusing on the periods 2006-2015 and 2007-2016 respectively, this report covers 2016 to 2022, using the funding data from the Dimensions[1] dataset, which includes information from more than 600 funders and 7 million awarded grants with funding totalling $2.4 trillion+ (in US Dollars).

The key findings of the updated report, based on the available data, highlight the following trends:  

·       The fields of Earth Sciences (10.3 percent) and Environmental Science (5.5 percent) are the two largest recipients of Arctic research funding. 

·       The US is the largest Arctic research nation in terms of total spending and number of projects started. It also has the most comprehensive coverage of funding sources in the dataset.  

·       Canada and Russia are the second and third largest nations in terms of number of projects started, followed by Norway and Sweden.

·       UArctic institutions are central actors in Arctic research globally. 

·       Researchers from Arctic Council Observer nations are financing a substantial amount of research on the Arctic. In particular, the UK and Japan finance a significant number of projects, followed by Germany and China with considerable numbers of Arctic-related research projects.

·       Funding from the European Union holds the position of the eighth-largest funder based on the number of projects awarded. The European Union is characterized by a few projects with large funding.

·       The analysis suggests that there is neither growth nor shrinkage in the relative volume of Arctic research funding over the period 2016–2022 in comparison with the growth of the general scientific community.

·       Private funders and foundations contribute little to Arctic research. Only one percent of the projects starting in 2016–2022 were funded privately. 

In general, the largest sources of external public funding for Arctic research come from the United States (US), Russia, Canada, and Norway, with the US being the biggest net contributor. Other kinds of funding, such as base budgets, are not described in this report. In addition, data on the public funding and funding amounts of Arctic research in Russia, Canada, and the Kingdom of Denmark are not always provided by the funders in project profiles, and net value is sometimes not disclosed by the funders themselves. 

This report specifically investigates projects initiated between 2016 and 2022, providing insights into the contemporary funding landscape of Arctic research. Understanding the geographical and institutional distribution of funding, as well as the specific areas of focus within this funding, holds significance for UArctic and Arctic Council officials. Such insights facilitate their ability to offer informed guidance to their respective members, aiding in the identification of strategic priorities.

Moreover, gaining insights into the entities funding Arctic research, and those not engaged in such funding, holds importance for UArctic and Arctic Council science officers. Armed with information about Arctic-focused endeavours they can engage with funding bodies, fostering dialogue aimed at enhancing support, and collaboration for such initiatives.

This article provides an explanation for previously observed gender differences in scientific performance during doctoral studies and the early career. Data is based on doctoral students in science, technology, and medicine at a Swedish university. We collected information on each doctoral student’s publication and employment history. We also created publication histories for the doctoral candidates main supervisors. The data was supplemented with information on gender, age, and research area. Informed by theories on academic socialization, our research questions focus on how gender differences in productivity during doctoral studies and the early career relate to research collaboration and behaviour/characteristics of the main supervisor. Results show that the gender gap in productivity during doctoral studies, and the early career, can be explained by the degree to which the doctoral students co-author publications with their main supervisors and the size of their collaborative networks.

Publishing in peer-reviewed journals as a part of the doctoral education is common practice in many countries. The publication output of doctoral students is increasingly used in selection processes for funding and employment in their early careers. Against the backdrop of this development, the aim of this study is to examine (1) how performance during the doctoral education affect the probability of attaining research excellence in the early career; and (2) if there is performance differences between males and females in the early career and to which degree these gender differences can be explained by performance differences during the doctoral education. The data consist of Swedish doctoral students employed at the faculty of science and technology and the faculty of medicine at a Swedish university. Our main conclusions are that (1) research performance during the doctoral education has a positive effect on attaining excellence in the early career; (2) there is an interaction between publication volume and excellence during doctoral education suggesting that a combination of quantity and quality in doctoral students’ performance is indicative of future excellence; (3) there are performance differences in the early career indicating that males have a higher probability of attaining excellence than females, and; (4) this difference is partly explained by performance differences during the doctoral education.

The aim of this article is to analyze the development of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) as a research domain over the period 1966-2016. Using bibliometric methods, the publication pattern will be analyzed with a focus on journal articles and sources. Furthermore, we will analyze the development of clinical research and map the general content of the publications. The data set consist of 105 216 publications, that have Complementary Therapies as their MeSH major topic, in the Medline database. The expansion of CAM research took place in the late 1990s. At the end of the time period about 20 percent of the publications were classified as clinical trials, but relatively few according to clinical phase. A majority of the core journals, defined by the Bradford law of scattering, showed a focus on CAM. The impact of these journals, measured by SNIP values, were close to the average. The analysis of MeSH terms revealed that the dominating therapies were Muscoskeletal manipulations, Acupuncture Therapy and Mind Body Therapies. The co-word analysis of author keywords showed that Acupuncture were the largest single node. Furthermore, it was possible to detect a specific CAM cluster. CAM has developed to a small but distinct research domain. There are signs of specialization in/about CAM as well as integration in other medical sub-fields. Furthermore, there are signs of a young medical domain, characterized by small and exploratory clinical studies. 

Aim: The aim of this study is to analyse the development of Scandinavian research on complementary and alternative medicine in terms of publication pattern and general content. Furthermore we will map research networks. 

Methods and data: This study is based on bibliometric methods. The dataset consists of 1441 publications with at least one author with a Scandinavian address and/or organisational affiliation, from 2005–2017, in Medline and Web of Science. 

Results and conclusions: Complementary and alternative medicine is a small and moderately growing research field in Scandinavia, with an average of 120 publications per year. The largest sub-term is integrative and complementary medicine, but the majority of documents are classified as other medical sub-fields. A similar pattern is found regarding the sources. The Medical Subject Heading classifications of the documents and the author keywords indicate that much of the relevant research takes a general focus on complementary and alternative medicine. Regarding specific therapies, mind-body and sensory art therapies are particularly prominent in the material. Various aspects of pain, mental health and gynaecology are recurrent health issues. In total, 31.5% of the publications are classified as clinical trials. The organisations referenced most frequently in the material are Karolinska Institutet and UiT Tromsö and it is clear the research is based at large universities and university hospitals. The research networks have relatively different profiles and collaborate with both Scandinavian and international organisations.

According to a number of psychological and sociological theories, individuals are susceptible to social influence from their immediate social environment, especially during adolescence. An important social context is the network of one’s peers. However, data limitations, specifically a lack of longitudinal data with information about respondents’ social networks, have limited previous analyses of the relationship between peers and prejudice over time. In this article, we rely on a five-wave panel of adolescents, aged either 13 or 16 in wave 1 (N = 1,009). We examine the effects of this social context on prejudice by focusing on nominated friends’ attitudes, attitudes of prestigious peers, and respondents’ own positions in their networks. Results indicate that the level of prejudice among peers affects individual prejudice over time. Results also show that both prestigious and nonprestigious peers affect prejudice. Finally, adolescents’ own positions in their networks matter: Network centrality is inversely related to prejudice.