SCIENTIFIC COMMUNICATIONS AS DISTRIBUTED INFORMATION STRUCTURES
Purpose of the work: improving the scientific and methodological base in the field of science-metrics to ensure network communications in the scientific community. Method used: information and statistical analysis, expert assessment and forecast of research activities in science-metrics based on monitoring and structural analysis of scientific communications. Results: it is substantiated the structural and functional concept of analyzing citation databases as distributed information structures, and the need to apply methods of intellectual analysis of weakly structured data, semantic network technologies, as well as the integration of traditional citation metrics with altmetrics indicators that reduce the time of information search in scientific databases. The place and validity of the task of citation analysis in the digital space for assessing trends in the development of science, identifying promising areas and developing strategies for scientific and technical perfection is shown.