High volume, low impact for Arctic research

Norway’s researchers are major publishers of scientific articles on the Arctic, but citation impact lags behind other leading countries, a report has found.

Norway was the third largest nation after the United States and Canada in terms of publications relating to the Arctic between 2012 and 2014, the report, published this month by the Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education (Nifu), said. The country contributed to 8.3 per cent of the global article production relating to the Arctic—compared with 0.62 per cent for all research.

For polar research in general, Norway is the fifth largest country in terms of scientific publishing—and was involved in 5.6 per cent of polar research published between 2012 and 2014. International collaboration featured prominently, as 73 per cent of articles on polar research during this period had co-authors from other countries.