Update: Bibliometric analysis of publications from North Korea indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection from 1978 to July 2018

This study presents an update of a previous study, ‘Bibliometric analysis of publications from North Korea indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection from 1988 to 2016,’ which was published in Science Editing volume 4, issue 1. A re-analysis was performed because an incomplete search strategy was used in the original publication, and the present study analyzed the same bibliometric characteristics of publications from North Korea indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection from 1978 to 2018. The Web of Science Core Collection was searched by selecting ‘North Korea’ in the country field of the basic search results on July 31, 2018. A total of 533 articles were identified. There were no results from before 1978. China, Germany, and Australia were main countries of collaboration. Researchers from Kim Il Sung University produced the most articles. The main research fields were physics, mathematics, materials science, chemistry, and engineering. The funding agencies were mostly from China. The number of articles by North Korean authors only was 105, with the same main research fields. The results were almost the same as reported in the previous article, except for a much higher number of publications. The above results indicate that the North Korean government has asked researchers to publish their works in international journals; therefore, it has allowed them to access the internet. Based on the trends we identified, we anticipate that there will be a continuous increase in publications from North Korea in international journals indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection.