National orientation of Ukrainian journals: means-ends decoupling in a semi-peripheral state

A global exploratory comparison of country self-citations 1996-2019

Self-citations are a key topic in evaluative bibliometrics because they can artificially inflate citation-related performance indicators. Recently, self-citations defined at the largest scale, i.e., country self-citations, have started to attract the attention of researchers and policymakers. According to a recent research, in fact, the anomalous trends in the country self-citation rates of some countries, such as Italy, have been induced by the distorting effect of citation metrics-centered science policies. In the present study, we investigate the trends of country self-citations in 50 countries over the world in the period 1996-2019 using Scopus data. Results show that for most countries country self-citations have decreased over time. 12 countries (Colombia, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Italy, Malaysia, Pakistan, Romania, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and Ukraine), however, exhibit different behavior, with anomalous trends of self-citations. We argue that these anomalies should be attributed to the aggressive science policies adopted by these countries in recent years, which are all characterized by direct or indirect incentives for citations. Our analysis confirms that when bibliometric indicators are integrated into systems of incentives, they are capable of affecting rapidly and visibly the citation behavior of entire countries.

Inconsistent quality signals: evidence from the regional journals

Nowadays many countries and institutions use bibliometric assessment of journal quality in their research evaluation policies. However, bibliometric measures, such as impact factor or quartile, may provide a biased quality assessment for relatively new, regional, or non-mainstream journals, as these outlets usually do not possess a longstanding history, and may not be included into indexing databases. To reduce the information asymmetry between academic community (researchers, editors, policymakers) and journal management, we propose an alternative approach to evaluate journals quality signals using previous publication track record of authors. We explore the difference in the quality signals sent by regional journals. Traditional, journal-level, bibliometric measures are contrasted with generalised measures of authors' publishing records. We used a set of 50,477 articles and reviews in 83 regional journals in Physics and Astronomy (2014-2019) to extract and process data on 73 866 authors and their additional 329,245 publications in other Scopus-indexed journals. We found that traditional journal-level measures (such as journal quartile, CiteScore percentile, Scimago Journal Rank) tend to under-evaluate journal quality, thus contributing to an image of low-quality research venues. Author-level measures (including the share of papers in the Nature Index journals) send positive signals of journal quality and allow us to subdivide regional journals by their publishing strategies. These results suggest that research evaluation policies might consider attributing greater weight to regional journals, not only for the training purposes of doctoral students but also for gaining international visibility and impact.

Implications of Publication Requirements for the Research Output of Ukrainian Academics in Scopus in 1999–2019

Purpose

This article explores the implications of publication requirements for the research output of Ukrainian academics in Scopus in 1999–2019. As such it contributes to the existing body of knowledge on quantitative and qualitative effects of research evaluation policies.

Design/methodology/approach

Three metrics were chosen to analyse the implications of publication requirements for the quality of research output: publications in predatory journals, publications in local journals and publications per SNIP quartile from the disciplinary perspective.

Findings

Study results highlight, that, firstly, publications of Ukrainian authors in predatory journals rose to 1% in 2019. Secondly, the share of publications in local journals reached the peak of 47.3% in 2015. In 2019 it fell to 31.8%. Thirdly, though the total number of publications has risen dramatically since 2011, but the share of Q3+Q4 has exceeded the share of Q1+Q2. To summarise, the study findings highligh, that research evaluation policies are required to contain not only quantitative but also qualitative criteria.

Research limitation

The study does not explore in detail the effects of a particular type of publication requirements.

Practical implications

The findings of the study have practical implications for policymakers and university managers aimed to develop research evaluation policies.

Originality/value

This paper gains insights into the effects of publication requirements on the research output of Ukrainian academics in Scopus.