Comparison of Czech and Slovak Independent Research in the 21st Century

Independent research of a country may be defined as research conducted solely by researchers affiliated with institutions of that specific country with no external collaborators. In fact, it represents the 'core' research a country is able to carry out without any foreign help. Therefore, studying a country's independent research may give a more genuine picture of the country's research capacities. In this study, we analyse and compare the independent research of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, two countries that emerged after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993, based on journal articles published between 2001 and 2013, and indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded. We concentrate on the production of scholarly publications, research topics and journals, institutions, and citations of Czech and Slovak articles. We conclude that although Czech and Slovak independent research have some common features, they differ largely in some aspects such as article topics and citation impact.