A PUZZLE OF ESTONIAN SCIENCE: HOW TO EXPLAIN UNEXPECTED RISE OF THE SCIENTIFIC IMPACT
A PUZZLE OF ESTONIAN SCIENCE: HOW TO EXPLAIN UNEXPECTED RISE OF THE SCIENTIFIC IMPACT

Summary/Abstract: Only sufficient economic wealth can produce science with the highest quality. However, there is room for many intervening factors, which can moderate the process of how money invested into research transforms into a bibliometrically measurable outcome. In this paper, based on the latest update of the Essential Science Indicators (ESI), covering the period 2007–2017, we analyze the progress of Estonian science against the background less successful neighbors, Latvia and Lithuania, in the pursuit of scientific excellence. Estonia improved the impact of scientific papers by eleven positions occupying the 17th position in the world-ranking list of countries/territories, sandwiched between France and Israel who both have approximately two times larger DGP per capita to say nothing about 68 and 12 Nobel Prize winners respectively. By the percentage of papers reaching the top-cited category, Estonia occupies the 7th position of the most successful nations. The fact that Estonian papers are cited 30% more frequently than papers recorded by ESI in general is a puzzle because Estonia is spending only about 0.8% of its GDP on the R&D with a dropping tendency during the last three years. Factors that could moderate transformation of the input money into scientific output are discussed.

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