From European integration to European integrity: case of Latvia, Lithuania, Poland

Abstract

Globalization processes create a number of serious internal and external challenges for academic integrity which should not be solved in the framework of one country. Ensuring the effective operation of such a space is not possible without the integration of all its elements, including scientific ones, into a single system. The scientific integration in the European Union is fueled by the functioning of single scientific space of the European Research Area. Such system has already become an effective mechanism to overcome issued which relevant to academic integrity. However, the question is how effective this system is for countries that have recently joined the EU. Among such countries, we have chosen Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, since they are all ex-members of the Warsaw Pact, and thus have approximately similar problems in the academic community. The analyses was conducted using the dataset from scientific database Scopus for two periods 1995-2003 and 2004-2017. The findigs proved the number of publications in Latvia, Poland, and Slovakia indexed by Scopus were increased after EU integration. Besides, most of the publication analysed the issued which connected with academic integrity in research. At the same time, the citation of the scientists also increased. The findigs proved, that the impact from scientific integration into a single European scientific space exists, but its significance is negligible.