Foreign Journals of Information and Library Issues: Analysis of Publication Opportunities for Scientific and Pedagogical Staff

Abstract

One of the performance indicators of higher education institutions is publication activity of scientific and pedagogical staff in journals indexed by the international scientometric databases Web of Science and Scopus. Of particular interest is the study of the possibility of publications in foreign journals with a high quartile. The issue of foreign publications is acute for domestic researchers of library and information activities. The study identified 227 foreign journals that reflect the category “Library and information sciences” and publish information in English. There were selected for study 130 journals indexed in the Web of Science. The analysis of indicators of professional foreign periodicals allowed to make the rating of journals that are relevant for publishing scientific articles on teaching the library disciplines. The detailed analysis of the topics of publications in the identified journals helped to determine specialized foreign periodicals on library and information issues. During the analysis, there were selected the professional journals that reflect the results of research in the field of principal disciplines of the mandatory part of the bachelor’s degree program in “Library and information activities”.The article considers the topics of specialized professional periodicals of foreign countries. For the selected publications, the author compiled the comparative table of the thematic distribution of publications with chronological coverage of 10 years that allowed identifying thematic headings with high publication activity. The article presents the analysis of territorial distribution of journals and identifies the leading foreign publishers. The author briefly highlights the features of publication placement in foreign journals. Based on information provided on the information and analytical portal eLIBRARY.ru, the author conducted the assessment of placement of publications by leading researchers in the field of library science in identified periodicals. The article presents the results of analytical review of the main foreign journals indexed by Web of Science and related to the first and second quartile, which publish articles in English and reflect issues in library and information sphere. The author established that publication in foreign professional periodicals can be implemented by domestic researchers and teachers of library and information disciplines, both in the analysed journals and other specialized publications and journals in related scientific fields.