Join@published by Elsevier Science Ltd, Oxford and Akaddmiai Kiad6, Budapest Scientometrics, Vol. 45, No. 1 (1999) 137-166 HISTORY MATTERS: THE INHERITED DISCIPLINARY STRUCTURE OF THE POST-COMMUNIST SCIENCE IN COUNTRIES OF CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE AND ITS RESTRUCTURING + J. KOZLOWSKI, 1 S. RADOSEVIC, 2 D. IRCHA 3 lCentrefor Science Policy and Higher Education Studies, Warsaw University (Poland) 2SPRU, Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Sussex, Brighton (UK) 3Laboratory of Medical Physics, Warsaw University (Poland) (Received January 24, 1999) The inherited disciplinary structure of the science of post-communist countries of CEE carries a strong common features of its past. The communist heritage is present in: a) a relatively homo- geneous research profile among post-communist countries; b) the similar structure of disciplinary comparative advantages of post-communist countries; c) the unbalanced and concentrated disciplinary structure of comparative advantages. The analysis is based on ISI databases and uses statistics on papers and citations for the 1992-1997 period for all central and eastern European countries as well as for other world regions. In the conclusions we discuss the relevance of the results for the restructuring of science in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Introduction The restructuring of science systems of Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) started immediately after the political dissolution of the former system (Meske et al, 1998). The two main results of restructuring are an increased autonomy in science and the introduction of competition principles in research funding (Frankl and Cave, 1997). From heavy politically controlled science, restructuring has worked towards a system controlled by the scientific community. From a system funded dominantly on an institutional basis restructuring has resulted in a higher share of project funding. However, the autonomy and competition has not necessarily led to restructuring in terms of research topics and the relevance of science to a radically changed economic and technological structure. + Part of the research which forms the basis for this paper has been funded by the DGXII TSER project 'Restructuring and reintegration of S&T systems in economies in transition'. 0138-9130/99US $15. O0 Copyright 91999 Akaddmiai Kiad6, Budapest All rights reserved