Country shifts in the authorship of conference papers

There are significant scatters in indexed conference papers quantity in different fields of science and countries that are of a different nature. This paper proposes a methodology for calculating disciplinary and institutional shifts of publishing in conference proceedings and its application to country analysis based on Scopus data. A disciplinary shift is the deviation of the conference paper share of a country from the world average, which is caused by the scientific specialization of this country. The institutional shift is the deviation of the conference paper share of a country from the world average, caused by the national specifics of the science policies, in particular, excessive stimulation of publication activity. The study confirms previously observed institutional shifts in the Czech Republic, Russia, and Indonesia, and identifies several more countries where there may also be distortions, caused by science policies.