EU-EAEU dilemma of Armenia: Does science support politics?

On January 1, 2015, the Republic of Armenia joined the (Russian-led) Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and actually refrained from entering into the alternative Association Agreement with the European Union (EU). Nevertheless, despite the prevalence of historic ties with the scientific community of the EAEU member-states and some push towards that direction, Armenian researchers demonstrate a certain scientific autonomy, which is expressed in numerous international scientific collaborations with researchers from many European countries. This paper proposes a bibliometric analysis of the international scientific collaboration between (i) Armenia and EU countries, and (ii) Armenia and EAEU countries, based on the papers indexed by the Web of Science Core Collection database and the Russian Science Citation Index database. Results indicate that the international collaboration with researchers from countries of both blocks gradually grows, displaying similarities and differences. Globally, Armenian researchers seem to collaborate more with researchers from EU countries rather than EAEU countries. Despite this, individual collaborations with Russia continue to prevail over those with other individual European countries, primarily Germany. Finally, it has been noted that “megaprojects” significantly influence the scientific collaborations between Armenian and foreign researchers.