Development of National Citation Index as a Condition for the Formation of a System to Evaluate Scientific Research Performance

Nowadays the management of resources allocated to science depends directly on the availability of information about the state of scientific research in the country and abroad. Due to the increasing number of research projects that receive public funding and that are carried out with the support from various funds, special importance is attached to the issue concerning the analysis and comprehensive evaluation of scientific research performance and the choice of the most promising research topics. The article substantiates the necessity to develop a national information and analytical system of citation, which should become part of the system to assess the effectiveness and performance of Russian scientists and scientific organizations. The author uses the analysis of bibliometric indicators of the Russian Science Citation Index and shows the evolution of publication activity of organizations engaged in economic research and subordinate to the Federal Agency of Scientific Organizations of Russia. The results demonstrate that scientific organizations increase their publication activity in the RSCI, improve the quality of publications and their scientific and practical significance, as evidenced by the steadily increasing citation rates. The indicators of a scientometric monitoring prove that in the future the RSCI along with expert assessment can be used as a tool to evaluate performance efficiency of scientific institutions; it can be viewed as an alternative to international databases that are officially used for this purpose at present.