Doctors of science in Croatia: Their scientific productivity between 1991 and 1996 - I. Nonproductive scientists

The purpose of this investigation was to enumerate papers published by doct ors of science from Croatia, between 1991 and 1996. The data could be used as the basis for initial steps towards a rational science policy in Croatia . The list of doctors of science was provided by the Ministry of Science an d Technology of the Republic of Croatia (MSTRC), and it included 6496 docto rs in 39 scientific fields. The number of their papers, published in Croati a, was obtained from the Bibliographic data base of the National and Univer sity Library, Zagreb. Those published outside of Croatia were enumerated by using the Current contents data base (Institute for Scientific Information , Philadelphia, USA). From the total number of doctors, 1160 (17.84%) have not published a single paper in Croatia. Out of them, 252 published papers only outside of Croatia. Thus, 908 (13.96%) doctors were totally nonproduct ive. Among scientists publishing abroad, there were almost exclusively thos e from Natural sciences; primarily physicists, chemists and mathematicians, less so geologists, geographists and biologists. A comparison of these dat a with similar ones from 25 years ago indicated that the percentage of nonp roductive doctors of science remained quite similar. It can be concluded th at there are "scientisis" in Croatia who, between 1991 and 1996, have not p ublished a single paper. Despite that, they are listed in the Registry of s cientists of the MSTRC. Also, this situation seems to have been going on fo r decades.