Bibliometrics Аnalysis of Scientific Publications: Academic Competition and Universities’ Development Strategies

The globalization of education has led to increased competition among universities not only locally, but also on the global academic market. Higher education institutions strive to occupy places in international university rankings, thus signaling their prestige to interested stakeholders, both individuals and the state. A high level of education in the country has a positive impact on many factors (development of science, labor market, reputation at the international level), so the state tries to stimulate universities in every possible way. One of the russian programs to support the development of universities is the Project 5-100, which ended in 2020. This paper is an exploratory analysis of the impact of the program on the publication activity of the participating universities, taking into account both quantity and quality. The methods used are bibliometrics and cluster analyses. As results, it was possible to get an understanding of the change in the publication activity of universities participating in the 5-100 program in the year of the end of the program (2020) in relation to the year before the program began (2012), including evidence of the use of predatory journals. In addition, the results of the cluster analysis showed the similarity of universities on the basis of publication activity, which was then compared with the distribution of universities into groups according to the amount of funding. Key words: bibliometrics, university ranking, 5top100, project 5-100, bibliometrics analysis, competition, signal theory, excellence initiative, predatory journal.