The current issue of the Russian Social Science Review gathers articles that employ a comparative methodology. (For earlier issues featuring comparative studies from various fields, see vol. 59, no. 5; vol. 58, no. 6; vol. 57, no. 2; vol. 55, no. 4; and vol. 54, nos. 2 and 3.)
The author team of our first selection, “The Potential for Reducing Mortality in Russia,” uses cross-national and regional data on life expectancy, with breakdowns by gender, urban/rural residence, and cause of death, not only to spotlight problems but also to identify the areas where targeted remedial efforts could potentially be most productive. In “Financing Innovation Development in the Context of Foreign Experience and Domestic Practice,” Aleksandr N. Tsatsulin likewise uses the concept of “innovation potential,” even as he sounds the alarm on Russia’s lagging labor productivity and the urgent need for a catch-up strategy for economic development. He sketches six models used to finance innovation in other countries, ranging from a preponderance of private capital to a greater reliance on state funding. In the international rankings as cited by the author, the United States is eighth and Russia thirty-second in share of GDP devoted to R&D.
Next, in “Supporting Talented Youth: The Experience of Russia and Foreign States,” Nadezhda V. Knyaginina and Diana M. Yanbarisova survey the criteria used for identifying gifted children in different countries and the variety of programmatic and financial means for supporting the development of students’ special abilities. In “A Cross-Cultural Comparison of the Academic Engagement of Students,” Irina A. Shcheglova focuses on the culturally distinctive educational environments at Russian, Chinese, Japanese, American, and British research universities and the ways that cultural norms inflect students’ attitudes and performance.
Finally, in “‘Locals’ and ‘Cosmopolitans’: On the Productivity of Scholars,” the author team concludes that the competencies and social capital that facilitate scholars’ achievements and influence in Russia and abroad are different. They argue, further, that scholarly citation indexes are inadequate to the task of representing and evaluating the achievements of scholars who publish exclusively in Russian-language journals and are absent from international conferences. Clearly, the Russian Social Science Review and the translation journals it draws from perform a valuable service in lowering the language barrier, including for the article in question!
—P.A.K.