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The problem of publications in "predatory" sources is actively discussed in the scientific community, and it has attracted the attention of government agencies responsible for scientific and technological policy. This article attempts to assess the scale of contamination of world scientific products with articles not worthy of publication. The research is based on a list of journals and collections of regular conferences excluded from the Scopus database for reasons of violation of scientific ethics. An analysis of the publications published in these sources in 2010–2019 made it possible to identify the countries and scientific areas that are most affected by the activities of predatory publishers. According to the results of calculations, the problem of scientific garbage has not spared Russia and is most acutely manifested in economic and technical sciences and some areas of medical sciences. The authors formulated conclusions about the sources of this problem and the tactics of counteracting the activities of publication "predators" on the part of states. The question is raised about how to relate to publication in a "garbage" journal and whether it is worthwhile to draw a line between "forced" and "selfish" publications in such periodicals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The results on the representation of Russian publications in the global array of publications on narrow thematic trends are presented for the entire post-Soviet period against the backdrop of the ranking in the Web of Science Core Collection (WoS CC). The Web of Science Categories classifier was used for search and subsequent analysis. Of the 252 WoS CC subject categories, results on 132 scientific trends were obtained in which the share of Russian publications in 2010‒2017 was no less than 0.4% of the global flows in the respective disciplines. As a result, it was discovered that Russia had gradually been restoring its positions, lost after 1993‒2000, in the global rating of countries by the number of publications in the WoS CC. At present, positive changes are observed both for the entire array of Russian publications and as differentiated by narrow scientific subjects. It has been discovered that Russia reached its maximal positions in the ranking in 1993‒1999, while the greatest decline, when the share of Russian publications was minimal, fell to 2011–2014. Data about the scientific trends in which Russia has been among the top ten countries by the share of publications in the global array over the entire post-Soviet period are presented. This list somewhat widened from 2010 through 2017 and now comprises 39 trends in which Russia is among the Top-10; in eight knowledge areas, it is among the top five countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]