Russian Science Citation Index on the WoS platform: a critical assessment

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the journals of the Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI) (Web of Science platform) in respect to publication misconduct and predatory practices. Design/methodology/approach The paper employs formal criteria developed by the Disseropedia of Russian Journals (a.k.a. the Journal Project of the Russian Dissernet). Findings A substantial number of the RSCI journals violate publishing ethics and/or are involved in predatory practices (fake peer-review, plagiarism and self-plagiarism, publication of pseudoscientific papers and so on). The general trend is negative: the number of such journals was higher in July 2018 than in 2015 when the RSCI was launched. The authors propose that this situation is due to the non-transparent and partly defective process of journal selection involved; primarily it can be attributed to problems with the RSCI expert pool. Research limitations/implications Many cases of publication misconduct are inevitably overlooked due to natural limitations of the tools. Originality/value The approach and methods were developed by the Disseropedia of Russian Journals and the Dissernet for the specific local Russian situation, where the scientific and editorial community is corrupt and the institution of reputation does not work properly. The authors believe that the experience may also be helpful for scientists and academic officials from other countries.

Co‐authoring with undergraduate students: An emerging process from the semi‐periphery of the world of science

“…At the same time, many of these journals suffer from internal editorial policies and processes that impede their strategic development. For example, a recent evaluation of journals in the Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI), which is available via Clarivate, the WoS platform, but not included in the WoS Core Collection, identified a number of unethical editorial practices (Kassian & Melikhova, 2019). The most frequent include editorial board members that operate such unethical publication practices as accepting manuscripts in exchange for a review of another author's submission, and a promise of a quick (less than 2 weeks) peer‐review process.…”

“…At the same time, many of these journals suffer from internal editorial policies and processes that impede their strategic development. For example, a recent evaluation of journals in the Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI), which is available via Clarivate, the WoS platform, but not included in the WoS Core Collection, identified a number of unethical editorial practices (Kassian & Melikhova, 2019) (Miao & Huang, 2021;Wang et al, 2021).…”

Expert judgments versus publication-based metrics: do the two methods produce identical results in measuring academic reputation?

“…The Russian Index of Science Citation is known for wide coverage of not only journal sources, but also various kinds of academic literature, including books and their chapters; dissertations and policy memoranda (Moskaleva et al. , 2018; Kassian and Melikhova, 2019). Third, wide availability of metrics has allowed us to use both standard and non-standard bibliometric indicators including the special metric for potential metric abuse.…”

“…Second, in gathering bibliometric indicators, we rely on national sources of bibliometric data that are especially important for non-Western higher education systems, because the research produced in these systems is not always indexed by the Web of Science or Scopus (Mosbah-Natanson and Gingras, 2014). The Russian Index of Science Citation is known for wide coverage of not only journal sources, but also various kinds of academic literature, including books and their chapters; dissertations and policy JD 79,1 memoranda (Moskaleva et al, 2018;Kassian and Melikhova, 2019). Third, wide availability of metrics has allowed us to use both standard and non-standard bibliometric indicators including the special metric for potential metric abuse.…”

Knowledge production on predatory publishing: A systematic review

“…In parallel with the momentum it gained, predatory publishing has received heightened attention in the last couple of years, both in the form of editorials and empirical studies. Forming a new field of study, distinct but related literature streams have examined a range of topics such as the prevalence of predatory journals in scholarly databases along with faculty‐approved whitelists widely used in research evaluations (Demir, 2018; Kassian & Melikhova, 2019; Patwardhan et al, 2018), awareness of scholars about predatory journals and fraudulent conferences (Christopher & Young, 2015; Lang et al, 2019), citations of articles published in predatory journals (Frandsen, 2017), and the reasons why authors publish in predatory outlets (Seethapathy et al, 2016; Shehata & Elgllab, 2018), just to name a few. Regardless of this attention, however, to date, no effort has been made to examine, through bibliometric analysis, the field of predatory publishing's intellectual identity which, as with any field, is shaped and reshaped primarily by what is published and in which outlets “present an arena where dialogue about knowledge production and the nature of the field takes place” (Oplatka, 2012, pp.…”