Sofia, December 29 (BTA) - Research at a number of Bulgarian
higher educational establishments improved in 2020, ranking the
Medical University in Plovdiv and the Technical University in
Sofia next to such major centres as the Bulgarian Academy of
Sciences (BAS), the St Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia and
the Medical University in Sofia, the Ministry of Education and
Science said on Wednesday.

The Prof. Assen Zlatarov University in Burgas, the Medical
University in Varna and the Agricultural Academy also showed
good results, and the Sofia-based University of Chemical
Тechnology and Metallurgy, as well as the Angel Kanchev
University of Ruse, rank among the ten best in this field.

These results were published in the 2020 report of the R&D
Monitoring and Evaluation Committee for universities and
research organizations, based on the number of publications,
patents and citations by the number of researchers at the
relevant institutions.

BAS and the Agricultural Academy retained their leadership in
patent activity, although specialists say that was still far
below their potential. Otherwise, patent activity in research
organizations and universities remained at a low level.

Bulgaria continues to lag by other indicators too. As a
percentage of the total of active population in the country,
scientists are over two and a half times less than in other EU
countries. Young researchers are still less than those needed to
 replace those going into retirement. Bulgaria is four times
behind Greece and twice behind Serbia in terms of referenced
documents in international databases.

The decline of publication activity compared to 2019 is largely
associated with the pandemic, but the number of publications is
nevertheless higher compared to all other preceding years. Along
 with that, Bulgaria is improving the quality of research. In
the last five years (2016 - 2020) Bulgaria has achieved 40 per
cent of the publications in quartile Q1 (top quality) of the
international databases, outrunning Slovakia and Serbia and
ranking next to Croatia./RY/BR

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