Scientific Wealth of Mongolia on a Global Scale

This article attempts to objectively evaluate the scientific wealth of Mongolia as a nation, by analyzing journal publications by Mongolian scientists recorded in the ISI database. Publications by Mongolian authors for the period of 1979-2002 were included for analyses. Although the total number of publications has increased for the given period, there was no significant increase in the relative citation impact or RCI. Changes of publication quality as measured by RCI showed different trends for various scientific fields. Publications in clinical medicine and biology show most positive trend, whereas publications in mathematics and physics declined in quality. All the fields are well below the world’s total publication quality for a comparable period. Additionally, percentage of papers by Mongolian senior authors has declined (though the trend is not significant). This is a rather disturbing trend given the fact that the number of researchers with a doctor’s degree in the country has greatly increased during the same period of time. Quality of publications by Mongolian first authors and only Mongolian authors were significantly lower than collaborative ones. As far as we are aware, this is the first evaluation of scientific wealth of Mongolia as a whole and it is hoped that it would be helpful to policy-making and scientific communities in prioritizing and determining the direction of support and finance.