Characteristics of educational sciences research activity in European post-socialist countries

What is it about?

The aim of this paper is to examine research activity in educational sciences of 15 CEE countries that share the common historical legacy, with the purpose of understanding the specificity and dynamics of subject and content issues, and development of methodological approaches in the discipline. In this paper, we shall try to establish whether that is indeed the case by analysing the abstracts of papers of scientists from post-socialist countries published in peer review journals indexed in the Scopus database from 1996 to 2013.

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Why is it important?

It was found that the field of educational sciences in the analysed sample has changed over time in terms of quantity, content, and methods, becoming more expansive and diverse, which is equally evident from papers published in CEE journals as well as in international journals. The changes manifest themselves first and foremost in the great expansion of published papers that increased five-fold from 2008 to 2013. The significant increase in the number of papers after 2008 could be explained by indexing in Scopus of a large number of CEE educational science journals, as well as the fact that most countries from the sample became the European Union member states in 2004, which might have had a direct impact on the opportunities for publishing papers in international referenced and recognisable journals.

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