Romanian scholars, and others, have decried the quality and quantity of scholarly productivity from Romania. However, Romanian scholars face challenges of both tradition and resources as they try to westernize their higher education system. We analyzed data from two sources to compare Romanian scholarly productivity to that of other countries from Central and Eastern Europe that have similar histories, as well as to worldwide publication rates. We found that Romanian scholarly productivity is weak compared to other countries in psychology, sociology, environmental sciences, linguistics, geology and medicine. However, Romanian scholarly productivity has been comparable to other countries in agriculture and computer sciences. We also found that Romanian scholarly productivity has shown gains in engineering and economics compared to other countries over a 20-year period. We conclude this paper with research-based recommendations for improving scholarly productivity.