This paper utilizes Rapaille’s (2006) concept of culture codes and Hall’s (2001) encoding and decoding model of communication to identify the culture codes of scientific concepts in global scientific online discourse. As an example, we attempted to identify the culture codes of the concept of “image”, because this concept can be interpreted in different ways in Russian and international scientific discourse. To identify these codes, we analyzed the interpretations of the concept of “image” in scientific online discourse in Russia and abroad. We studied the titles, key words, and abstracts of papers published in 2014–2018 that appeared in the Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI) and the Scopus abstract and citation database. As a result, we identified the culture codes of the concept of “image” in Russian and international scientific online discourse and compared the culture codes of RSCI-indexed and Scopus-indexed papers. The method we utilized may be used for revealing the culture codes of any scientific concept (using any citation database), which can contribute to revealing and understanding the interpretations of these concepts by researchers from different countries.