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arxiv: 2412.11719 · v1 · submitted 2024-12-16 · 💻 cs.DL

The publication activity and migration trends of Ukrainian scientists in the social sciences and humanities during the first two years of the Russo-Ukrainian war

Serhii Nazarovets This is my paper

Pith reviewed 2026-05-23 07:31 UTC · model grok-4.3

classification 💻 cs.DL
keywords Ukrainian scholarssocial scienceshumanitiespublication activitymigration trendsRusso-Ukrainian warinternational collaborationresearch resilience
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The pith

Ukrainian scholars in social sciences and humanities kept publishing from inside the country during the first two years of the war, with international ties occurring mainly through joint projects rather than moves abroad.

A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.

The paper examines publication records of Ukrainian SSH researchers who produced at least three papers each, using data from the Social Sciences Citation Index and Arts & Humanities Citation Index. It shows these scholars maintained their output while remaining affiliated with Ukrainian institutions. International collaboration appears in the form of co-authored projects with foreign partners instead of large-scale relocation. A sympathetic reader would see this as evidence that academic work can continue under conflict conditions when supported by remote partnerships rather than physical migration.

Core claim

Analysis of SSCI and AHCI records for the initial two years of the Russo-Ukrainian war indicates that Ukrainian scholars in the social sciences and humanities who met the minimum publication threshold continued their research from domestic institutions. International collaboration supported this activity primarily through joint research projects rather than through the relocation of scholars to foreign institutions.

What carries the argument

Tracking of author affiliations and co-authorship patterns in SSCI and AHCI data for Ukrainian SSH scholars with at least three publications each, to distinguish domestic continuation from migration.

If this is right

  • Scholarly output in Ukrainian SSH did not collapse despite the conflict.
  • Joint international projects served as the main channel for external support.
  • Physical relocation of researchers remained limited relative to project-based ties.
  • Data from established citation indexes can be used to monitor academic continuity in crisis settings.

Where Pith is reading between the lines

These are editorial extensions of the paper, not claims the author makes directly.

  • Prioritizing mechanisms that enable remote co-authorship could help sustain research in other conflict zones.
  • Scholars who ceased publishing altogether during the period fall outside the sampled group and may represent an unmeasured loss.
  • Extending the same affiliation-tracking method to later years of the conflict could test whether the pattern of limited migration holds over time.

Load-bearing premise

Citation index data from SSCI and AHCI accurately and comprehensively record both the output volume and the geographic affiliations of the selected Ukrainian SSH scholars.

What would settle it

A check of the same SSCI and AHCI records that finds a majority of these scholars shifting their primary affiliations to institutions outside Ukraine within the two-year window would contradict the claim of continued domestic activity.

Figures

Figures reproduced from arXiv: 2412.11719 by Serhii Nazarovets.

Figure 1
Figure 1. Figure 1: Articles and reviews of Ukrainian scientists published in 2014-2023 in the journals covered by SSCI and AHCI [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p016_1.png] view at source ↗
read the original abstract

This study analyses the publication activity and migration patterns of Ukrainian scholars in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) during the initial two years of the Russo-Ukrainian war. Focusing on scholars who published at least three papers, the study underscores the resilience of these scholars, who continued their academic endeavours within their homeland despite the conflict. The research utilizes data from the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (AHCI) to illustrate their continued scientific contributions under adverse conditions. It also highlights the crucial role of international collaboration in supporting Ukrainian SSH research, emphasizing that such collaborations primarily manifest through joint research projects rather than relocation of scholars to foreign institutions.

Editorial analysis

A structured set of objections, weighed in public.

Desk editor's note, referee report, simulated authors' rebuttal, and a circularity audit. Tearing a paper down is the easy half of reading it; the pith above is the substance, this is the friction.

Referee Report

2 major / 0 minor

Summary. The manuscript analyzes publication activity and migration patterns of Ukrainian scholars in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) during the first two years of the Russo-Ukrainian war. Drawing on SSCI and AHCI data for authors with at least three indexed papers, it concludes that these scholars largely continued their work within Ukraine despite the conflict, with international collaboration occurring primarily through joint research projects rather than physical relocation to foreign institutions.

Significance. If the affiliation-based inferences hold after validation, the work would offer descriptive evidence on academic resilience and the sustaining role of international networks in conflict-affected SSH research communities, filling a gap in studies of scholarly output under geopolitical stress.

major comments (2)
  1. [Abstract] Abstract: The central claim that scholars 'continued their academic endeavours within their homeland' and that collaborations 'primarily manifest through joint research projects rather than relocation' rests on counting stable Ukrainian affiliations across papers. No information is supplied on query construction, author disambiguation, affiliation parsing rules, or any validation (e.g., against ORCID records or institutional directories) to confirm that listed affiliations track physical location rather than maintained ties or remote collaboration.
  2. [Abstract] Abstract (sample definition): Restricting the sample to authors with ≥3 SSCI/AHCI papers selects for those whose output remains visible in these indexes, which are known to under-represent SSH fields; this selection may systematically exclude scholars whose work shifted to non-indexed outlets or ceased, weakening the generalizability of the 'resilience' conclusion.

Simulated Author's Rebuttal

2 responses · 0 unresolved

We thank the referee for these constructive comments, which highlight important issues of methodological transparency and sample representativeness. We address each point below and have revised the manuscript to improve clarity on methods, add explicit discussion of limitations, and strengthen the caveats around affiliation-based inferences.

read point-by-point responses

  1. Referee: [Abstract] Abstract: The central claim that scholars 'continued their academic endeavours within their homeland' and that collaborations 'primarily manifest through joint research projects rather than relocation' rests on counting stable Ukrainian affiliations across papers. No information is supplied on query construction, author disambiguation, affiliation parsing rules, or any validation (e.g., against ORCID records or institutional directories) to confirm that listed affiliations track physical location rather than maintained ties or remote collaboration.

    Authors: The full manuscript contains a Methods section describing the Web of Science data retrieval, the search strategy (Ukrainian institutional affiliations combined with author-name filters for the 2022–2023 period), and the rule requiring at least three papers for inclusion. Author disambiguation relied on consistent name-plus-affiliation matching across records. We acknowledge, however, that the original submission did not provide sufficient detail on these steps nor any external validation. We have now expanded the Methods section with the exact query syntax, parsing rules for multi-affiliation records, and a new Limitations subsection that explicitly states the assumption that listed affiliations serve as a proxy for location. We also note that comprehensive ORCID-based validation was not feasible at dataset scale and that affiliations may reflect administrative continuity rather than physical presence; this caveat has been added to both the abstract and the discussion of migration inferences. revision: yes

  2. Referee: [Abstract] Abstract (sample definition): Restricting the sample to authors with ≥3 SSCI/AHCI papers selects for those whose output remains visible in these indexes, which are known to under-represent SSH fields; this selection may systematically exclude scholars whose work shifted to non-indexed outlets or ceased, weakening the generalizability of the 'resilience' conclusion.

    Authors: The ≥3-paper threshold was chosen to ensure sufficient longitudinal observations for tracking affiliation stability. We agree that this restricts the sample to scholars whose work remains visible in SSCI/AHCI and may exclude those who reduced output, moved to non-indexed venues, or left academia. We have added a dedicated Limitations section that discusses (a) the known under-representation of SSH fields in these indexes, (b) the resulting selection bias toward more productive authors, and (c) the fact that our resilience claims apply specifically to this cohort of active, indexed scholars rather than the entire Ukrainian SSH community. The abstract has also been revised to qualify the scope of the findings. revision: yes

Circularity Check

0 steps flagged

No circularity: purely descriptive data reporting

full rationale

The paper performs a descriptive analysis of publication counts, affiliation strings, and collaboration patterns drawn directly from SSCI/AHCI records for authors with ≥3 papers. No equations, fitted parameters, predictions, or first-principles derivations are present. Claims about continued in-country activity and project-based collaboration follow immediately from tabulating the raw affiliation data; there is no reduction of any result to a self-citation chain, ansatz, or renamed input. The work is therefore self-contained against external benchmarks and receives the default non-circularity finding.

Axiom & Free-Parameter Ledger

0 free parameters · 1 axioms · 0 invented entities

The analysis depends on the assumption that citation-index data reliably records both output volume and author locations without major coverage gaps or affiliation errors for Ukrainian researchers.

axioms (1)
  • domain assumption SSCI and AHCI data accurately captures publication activity and author affiliations for Ukrainian scholars.
    The study uses these indexes to track activity and migration without discussing potential biases or coverage issues.

pith-pipeline@v0.9.0 · 5647 in / 1114 out tokens · 24436 ms · 2026-05-23T07:31:12.999392+00:00 · methodology

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Reference graph

Works this paper leans on

5 extracted references · 5 canonical work pages

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