Discussion
The history of scientometrics is often told as a predominantly Western story, focusing on Price and Garfield. This canonical narrative emphasizes the development of citation indexing and the emergence of individual-centered publication and citation metrics. Simultaneously, it omits a crucial parallel breakthrough: the rise of Soviet scientometrics, grounded in the broader Soviet tradition of
naukovedenie (the science of science). One of the main contributions in this field was a book called
Naukometriya written by Vasily Nalimov and Zinaida Mulchenko, While Nalimov is widely regarded as the sole author of the book, the influence of Mulchenko remains mostly unknown.
In a 2021 paper, Ronald Rousseau, introducing Western readers to the content of
Naukometriya asks the question: “Naukometriya has two authors. So, why is it not written that Nalimov and Mulchenko invented the term scientometrics?” (Rousseau, 2021, p. 213– 214). He eventually devoted his paper solely to the explanation that Nalimov introduced the term simply earlier than the publication of the book.We believe that Rousseau’s answer is incomplete. While it is indeed likely that the term originated from Nalimov, the book, and as we found out other key papers, were co-authored by Mulchenko, sometimes even with her as the first author. The suppression of her as a proper contributor into the background behind the bigger figure of Nalimov raises concerns about the influence of the Matilda Effect, i.e. the systematic exlusion of women from the history of science. Therefore, this article revisits the early history of Soviet scientometrics, examining the role of Zinaida Mulchenko in writing
Naukometriya. We argue that her involvement in writing this book was also significant.
To support this claim, we first reveal the key aspects of her biography obtained through the archival research and informants’ testimonies. Then, we compare the content of Naukometriya with Mulchenko’s Ph.D. dissertation, i.e. the first doctoral thesis in scientometrics defended in the Soviet Union, underlying the structural, systematic and content overlaps that question the commonly held view of sole authorship. Such analysis is further accompanied with the track-record of Nalimov-Mulchenko co-authorship reconstruction preceding the years of Naukometriya publication. Finally, we propose that Mulchenko’s diminished positionality as the co-author of the book can be understood through the lens of the Matilda Effect – a systematic under-recognition of women’s contributions to science. Drawing from multi-level analysis, we reconstruct her role in writing the book and identify the reasons that eventually led to Mulchenko’s erasure from the history of Soviet scientometrics.
