State of forest research in 2010s – a bibliographic study with special reference to Finland, Sweden and Austria

Using bibliometric methods, this report analysed the volumes of global forest research and research collaboration between researchers, institutes and countries during the period 2010–2019. The keywords used in the bibliometric search resulted in a good match with the publication lists of three major Finnish forest research organisations. The final corpus of “forest” publications consisted of 355,000 articles, proceeding papers, reviews, books, book chapters and letters listed in the Web of Science database. During 2010–2019, the volume of Finnish publications in forest sciences have increased and the share of internationally collaborative papers has also grown. However, the international position of Finnish and Nordic forest research is slowly declining, owing to the modest growth in publishing, compared to fast-growing countries like China and Russia. When comparing Finnish and Swedish research organisations, those from Sweden were more internationally oriented. In both countries, the five top institutes produced more than three quarters of their country’s respective publications. Analyses based on bibliometric data used in this study reveal the status regarding publication output and trends. These analyses can provide objective evidence that is needed when developing research strategies and policies as well as allocating funding resources.