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Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU) participated in the University of the Arctic (UArctic) world congress in St. Petersburg. The first in the history of the organization, the forum gathered more than 500 representatives of the universities and researchers from subarctic countries. The work of the Arctic Science & Research Analytics section was led by Igor Osipov, the Advisor to the FEFU President on Priority Projects, who together with the colleagues and partners presented the analytical report on trends in the world Arctic research over the past 10 years.

The study was conducted by the international UArctic Research Analytics Task Force chaired by Igor Osipov, together with the Digital Science, Elsevier publishers, and Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI). Based on the open data of Scopus, Dimensions and RSCI, the outcomes of the Congress presented to the rectors of the UArctic member universities a summary analysis of information on world trends of the Arctic research funding, the subjects of publications, as well as directions of the Russian and foreign research on Arctic issues, including the ones implemented by the network's universities.

"It is a truly international project, involving researchers from all Arctic countries: Russia, Norway, the United States, Canada, Finland, Sweden, as well as England and Germany. Together with our partners, we have studied the most representative public data sources on the Russian and English languages, information about grants allocated for the Arctic research, and data from alternative sources. We hope that this first synthesis experience of analyzing such huge amounts of data will be in demand by researchers themselves and leaders of the universities, as well as governments and relevant ministries of the member countries and observer countries of the Arctic Council," said Igor Osipov.

Having studied the information gathered from 2006 to 2015, the participants in the UArctic Research Analytics Task Force brought the following trends: today about 1% of global research is dedicated to the Arctic theme (approximately 100,000 articles in Scopus and 96,000 articles in RSCI), the level of funding for the Arctic studies has been stable over the last 10 years, and it also amounts to 1% (about 5 billion dollars). Approximately 50% of all global Arctic research and projects are led by the scholars from the UArctic member universities, and 35% of all scientific articles concerning the Arctic are written in international co-authorship. As per open data, the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR) ranks 1^st by the number of projects on the Arctic theme, and has entered the top 10 of the scientific funds of the Arctic Council participating countries for the past 10 years.

The final reports also include proposals for the university rectors and UArctic leadership on the development of the joint and network Arctic research to achieve higher academic performance and to strengthen international academic reputation of the universities.

Far Eastern Federal University has been a party to the University of the Arctic network from 2015. The international network brings together more than 180 educational institutions and organizations working in the field of higher education and science in the North, mainly from the countries of the Arctic Council. The decision to include FEFU in UArctic was adopted by the Council of the University—experts highly praised the FEFU's accumulated experience in studying the Arctic region and the prospects for the implementation of large-scale projects in the Arctic.

FEFU Press Service,
press@dvfu.ru