Bibliometric analysis of publications from North Korea indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection from 1988 to 2016

摘要

The aim of this study was to analyze the bibliometric characteristics of publications from North Korea indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection from 1988 to 2016. We hypothesized that the main research area would be the physical sciences, and that the number of articles would continually increase over time. The Web of Science Core Collection was searched using the terms “North Korea” OR “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” OR “DPRK” in the address field of the basic search on February 2, 2017. The country of the co-authors, affiliations, journals, annual number of publications, and research fields were analyzed. Additionally, the articles by North Korean authors only were analyzed for the same parameters. A total of 318 articles from North Korea were found. The most frequent countries of collaboration were China, Germany, and Australia. Kim Il Sung University produced the most articles. The main research fields were physics, mathematics, and materials science. The categories of the journal titles corresponded to the research fields. The rapid increase in the number of articles in 2015 and 2016 was remarkable, although this increase started from a very small baseline number of publications. The results of the analysis of the 46 articles published by North Korean authors only were equivalent to the results for the 318 articles presented above. Our hypotheses were confirmed. The surge of articles in 2015 and 2016 may represent the recent efforts by the North Korean government to emphasize scientific research and development. It is anticipated that the productivity of North Korean researchers in terms of publications in international journals will increase dramatically based on the above trends, although the publication baseline is very low.