Publications included in the core of the Rints. Rinz - Russian Science Citation Index

Why was it decided to exclude a group of journals from the RSCI?

The Russian Science Citation Index was created not only as a national register of publications of Russian scientists, but also as a tool for evaluating scientific activity. That is, the RSCI has two main tasks: a) collecting information from all sources in a single database on all publications of Russian scientists, and b) calculating statistical indicators to assess the publication activity of scientists and scientific organizations based on the citation of publications.

The RSCI copes quite successfully with the solution of the first task. Now there are already more than 6 thousand indexed Russian magazines. The total number of publications of Russian scientists in the database has exceeded 11 million, and each year one and a half million new publications are added (of which approximately 800 thousand are publications from the last year, the rest are archival). Of these 800 thousand, about 450 thousand are publications in scientific journals, the rest are monographs, articles in collections, conference proceedings, patents, dissertations, etc.

But with the solution of the second problem in recent years there are more and more difficulties. This is due to the rapid growth in the number of journals published in Russia, which in words position themselves as scientific peer-reviewed publications, but in reality they simply provide paid services on the publication of the author's works without any peer review. Anything can be published in such a journal, including any anti-scientific nonsense, since there is no input quality control of publications from a scientific point of view. There is also no control over the reasonableness and validity of citations in articles. For example, you can easily make at least a hundred references to your previous works or the works of your co-authors in each article, even if they are not thematically related to the content of this work and are not mentioned at all in the text. To wind up your bibliometric indicators in this way, as they say, is a matter of technology.

To combat this problem, the RSCI suggests using various modifications of indicators, including those that take into account self-citation, citation by co-authors, contractual citation, etc., but the methods for calculating them are becoming more and more complicated and it is not always advisable to use them in practice. And not everything can be corrected by indicators alone.

The saddest thing about this story is that the metastases of such unscrupulous practices have already begun to hit quite decent journals, the founders of which are universities and scientific organizations. Moreover, many scientists and teachers have already begun to treat publications in such journals quite tolerantly. This does not cause any indignation or rejection among their colleagues.

It is easy to predict the further development of the situation if nothing is done. The share of non-peer-reviewed publications in the RSCI will increase, which will lead to the fact that the indicators calculated from the RSCI database can no longer be used to evaluate scientific activity, since they will no longer reflect the real picture of the scientific significance of scientists and scientific organizations due to artificial manipulations. and magazines. As a result, the RSCI will be excluded from all normative documents related to the evaluation and monitoring of scientific activities. It will be replaced either by the newly formed core of the RSCI, or in general only by international scientific citation databases. Then those who today protest against the exclusion from the RSCI of unscrupulous publications in which they had the imprudence to publish will really have serious problems. After all, many of them have no publications at all in prestigious international journals.

To avoid such a pessimistic scenario, it is necessary to impose restrictions on the inclusion of non-peer-reviewed publications in the RSCI and exclude journals that have already been included there and do not meet the criteria of scientific and publishing ethics. The fact that this will be done was first announced a year ago at the conference "International Scientific Publication - 2016: Solving the problems of publishing ethics, peer review and preparation of publications". During the year, work was carried out to analyze and evaluate the journals indexed in the RSCI for their compliance with generally accepted criteria for a scientific peer-reviewed publication. As a result of this analysis, it was selected, which the other day were excluded from the RSCI.

The practice of excluding journals from science citation databases is not new. Journals are excluded from both Web of Science and Scopus. So, for example, recently, Scopus has been removed from those that do not meet the rules of publishing ethics, artificially increase their performance or are of too low quality.

How is the exclusion of journals from the RSCI technically carried out, what happens to the indicators of scientists who published in the excluded journals?

Technically, the journal does not disappear anywhere. Licensing agreements with publishers are not terminated, moreover, the publisher can, if desired, continue to supply information about new issues. But all articles from the excluded journals and citations from them are no longer taken into account when calculating bibliometric indicators in the RSCI. There are now three different levels for assessing publication activity on the site platform:

1) The core of the RSCI. This includes all publications in journals currently indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection, Scopus and RSCI (Russian Science Citation Index on the Web of Science platform) databases. In addition, the core will include the best monographs and proceedings of the most authoritative scientific conferences, selected on the basis of a rigorous peer review. The core of the RSCI is recommended for assessing the highest quality component of the array of publications of Russian scientists.

2) RSCI. After clearing unscrupulous publications, this will include only publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals, as well as non-journal publications that meet the requirements of publishing and scientific ethics. It is recommended for the analysis of publication activity in all scientific areas, including those where the level of domestic research does not yet reach the world level.

3) Scientific digital library. Various publications related to scientific activity, but not scientific in the strict sense of the word, including abstract, popular science, information and socio-political journals, as well as journals that cannot be classified as peer-reviewed. These publications do not participate in the statistical evaluation of scientific activity in the RSCI.

Accordingly, the main bibliometric indicators (the number of publications, the number of citations and the Hirsch index) are now calculated separately for each category, which makes it possible to compare them and understand the publications in which sources they are formed. All these indicators are presented on the page for analyzing the publication activity of a scientist. In the lists of publications and citations of the author, it is now also possible to display publications or links separately for each of the categories.

Why was it impossible to leave the already uploaded issues of the excluded journals in the RSCI or exclude only articles by individual authors who are winding up their indicators?

The logic of scientific citation databases is based on the fact that they do not select individual publications. They are physically unable to do it with such input streams publications. The selection takes place at the level of scientific journals, and the evaluation of individual articles is already carried out by the editors of scientific journals. Journals are a kind of distributed specialized centers for the examination of incoming manuscripts and the selection of the highest quality and scientifically significant works for publication. If this critical editorial function of a scientific journal ceases to function, the whole coherent system of bibliometric evaluation in scientific citation databases collapses. Therefore, the world practice is that the entire journals, and not individual articles, are added to the database and cease to be indexed. It is assumed that if the experts have selected a journal for inclusion in the index, then they trust all publications in this journal, since the editors of the journal guarantee their quality at an acceptable level.

All journals excluded from the RSCI at this stage, from the very beginning of their publication, carried out their activities with obvious violations of scientific publishing ethics, therefore all their issues were removed from the RSCI. Is it fair? If we analyze the composition of the authors who published articles in journals excluded from the RSCI, it turns out that 80% of them published no more than three articles in these journals, and half - in general, one article at a time. If these authors have other publications, then one or two articles will not have much impact on their performance. At the same time, there is a category of authors for whom the exclusion of these journals will become much more noticeable - about 4,000 scientists have published 10 or more articles in them. There are also anti-heroes here, who have 100 or more publications and several thousand citations in the excluded journals. A detailed analysis of the publication activity of these scientists confirms their use of publications in these journals in order to artificially boost their indicators. When an author has more than 500 publications in 2016, and these publications already have more than 1,400 citations, and at the same time, the core of the RSCI is zero, and the h-index is approaching 70, then this already speaks not only of a massive violation of publication ethics, but in general about the loss of common sense in the pursuit of indicators.

Now let's assume that all these publications would remain in the RSCI and imagine two scientists with a high h-index. The first one published all his life in high-ranking scientific journals, and his h-index really reflects his real scientific level. The second one took the path of least resistance and in a couple of years wound up the same Hirsch index for himself through publications in dubious journals and proceedings of correspondence conferences. It turns out that with a formal approach, both of these scientists equally apply for the same positions, titles, allowances, grants, etc. Is it fair? The interests of which of these scientists should be supported by the RSCI in this situation? We think the answer is obvious.

How to determine if a journal is peer-reviewed and whether it will be excluded from the RSCI in the future?

The main criteria by which it is possible to determine whether a journal is peer-reviewed and whether it meets the requirements of the RSCI are given in sufficient detail in. Many similar recommendations can be found on the Internet. First of all, you need to rely on common sense and do not fall for dubious advertising, where they promise everything quickly, cheaply and with guaranteed results. If you still have doubts, ask more experienced colleagues if this journal is authoritative in your scientific direction.

Yes, you can try to withdraw the article from the journal, finalize it and send it to one of the peer-reviewed publications. In this case, it is necessary to indicate that the article was published earlier, but retracted and revised. This will avoid later problems with text duplication during checks for incorrect borrowing.

Will work continue to clean up the RSCI from unscrupulous publications and how?

This work is very important and will certainly be continued. According to our estimates, among the six thousand journals indexed in the RSCI, at least 1000 journals do not conduct any review of incoming manuscripts at all, that is, only a third have been excluded from the RSCI so far. Also, numerous correspondence conferences and collective monographs will be excluded from the RSCI - very dubious genres of scientific publications that have recently become widespread in Russia, and in fact are fast way publish an article without any peer review.

How will new journals be included in the RSCI now?

Now there will be no more automatic inclusion of new journals in the RSCI. Each journal will go through an internal scoring system. If a new journal is created by an authoritative publishing house that already has journals in the RSCI and is not involved in any stories related to violations of publishing ethics, then it will begin to be indexed from the first issue.

If the publisher is new or there were questions about its previous editions, then the journal may start posting issues on the site, but they will not be taken into account immediately in the RSCI.

It is possible to significantly reduce the time for considering the issue of including a journal in the RSCI if the journal, along with the description of the articles, provides the texts of reviews on them. These reviews will be posted on the article description page. This will allow not only to confirm the very fact of reviewing articles, but also to assess the quality of this review.

Can a journal already indexed in the RSCI switch to a model with open placement reviews?

Yes it is possible. To do this, the publishing house of the journal must finalize agreements with the authors of publications and reviewers, having received their consent to publish reviews in the public domain. What is the interest of authors and reviewers in this case?

First, for the author, as well as for the journal, public proof of peer review of his work can matter. Secondly, the placement of reviews can become an incentive, a kind of catalyst for discussing the results of the work with colleagues and finding new directions for further research.

For the reviewer, open reviews are essentially the publication of the results of his hard work. And if the editors choose the option of disclosing information about the reviewer of this article, then this is also respect for colleagues and recognition of his qualifications by the scientific community. Experienced editors know that some reviewers write very interesting and detailed reviews that are useful not only for the author of the reviewed manuscript. Their publication may give a new perspective on the interpretation of the results obtained and new approaches to solving the problems raised in the study.

How will the process of posting open reviews be technically organized?

Review texts are placed on the publication description page. Access to them is open to all scientists registered in the Science Index system. Together with the text of the review, the editors provide information about the reviewer (name and ID of the author of the review) and the date of the review. The editorial board of the journal itself determines whether this information will be publicly available or not.

Also, the editors independently decide whether all reviews are opened or only the most interesting of them will be shown. If the decision to publish the article was made by the editorial board on its own, without the involvement of external experts, then instead of a review, the text of this decision can be provided. It is also allowed to publish not the full text of the review, but individual excerpts from it. The review can be corrected or compiled by the editors from several reviews. In addition, in some cases it may be of interest to publish the authors' responses to reviews.

Scientists registered in the Science Index system can also write their reviews and evaluate the level of this work after its publication. In addition, they have the opportunity to discuss the results of the work and discussions with the authors of the publication.

How can I withdraw an article if it has already been published in a journal?

Retraction of an article (retraction) is carried out at the official request of the editorial board of the journal. In this case, the initiator of retraction can be both the team of authors and the editors themselves. The most common causes of retraction are:

Detection of plagiarism in a publication;

Duplication of an article in several publications;

Detection of falsifications in work (for example, manipulation of experimental data);

The discovery of serious errors in the work (for example, incorrect interpretation of the results), which casts doubt on its scientific value.

To withdraw an article, the editors must indicate the reason for the retraction (in case of detection of plagiarism, indicating the sources of borrowing), as well as the date of retraction. Examples of retracted articles can be viewed or. Retracted articles and references from them are excluded from the RSCI and do not participate in the calculation of indicators.

Project of the Scientific Electronic Library e LIBRARY started in 1999 with providing Russian scientists with electronic access to leading foreign scientific publications, and 10 years ago began working with Russian-language publications. Today e LIBRARY is the world's largest resource of periodicals in Russian. We invited the General Director of the ScientificElectronic Library Gennady Eremenko.

- Gennady, in what main directions is the development of the resource carried out? What are the statistics, users, services?

e LIBRARY platform. EN brings together a number of projects, one way or another related to scientific information. Recently, the main development has been going in three directions, which are quite strongly intertwined and mutually complement and enrich each other.

The first direction is, in fact, the Scientific Electronic Library. The goal of this project, which really started it all, is the aggregation of full-text scientific information. These are primarily Russian scientific journals. There are already more than 4.7 thousand of them. A significant part of them (more than 3.7 thousand, i.e. almost 80%) are placed in the public domain, the rest are distributed by subscription. In what mode is the journal placed on the platform eLIBRARY. EN is decided by the publisher. Some journals are presented on the resource without full texts, only in the form of bibliographic descriptions and annotations in the RSCI (about 900 more publications), while the share of such journals is gradually decreasing.

The second direction of development is, of course, the RSCI. This Not commercial project, which was launched in 2006 with the financial support of the Russian Ministry of Education and Science. The aim of this project is to create a comprehensive bibliographic database of publications of Russian scientists and references to these publications, as well as to calculate various bibliometric indicators based on this information that can be used to assess the scientific activities of Russian scientists and research organizations.

And finally, the third direction is the Science Index information and analytical system, which is essentially an analytical add-on over the RSCI and adds new features for various categories of users. This is already a commercial project, thanks to which we can not only support the RSCI in the public domain, but also develop further, creating new useful services for Russian scientists.

- How do you assess the results of the year in general, what factors had the greatest impact on the results? In what way is the development of scientific periodicals databases in Russia and abroad carried out, how is the market changing? What are its national characteristics?

If we talk about scientific journals, then, probably, we can already say that we have reached the level when e LIBRARY covers almost the entire Russian scientific periodicals, at least all of its noteworthy part. That is, the phrase “if a journal is not in the Scientific Electronic Library or in the RSCI, then it simply does not exist” is becoming more and more relevant. This does not mean that the growth in the number of journals featured on the platform has stopped. If only because every year about 250-300 new magazines are born in the country, which also appear on eLIBRARY. RU ( rice. 1).

So lately, we have been thinking more and more not about how to attract the remaining journals to the platform (this process goes on by itself - the gravitational effect of the existing collection works and the desire of journals to get into the RSCI), but about how to really limit this collection decent magazines. It is no secret that in the last few years a lot of journals began to appear, outwardly very well disguised as scientific, but in fact, upon closer examination, they have nothing to do with science. The purpose of their creation is an elementary cheating of bibliometric indicators for a certain category of scientists, usually for a monetary reward. In such a “scientific” journal, one can easily find, for example, articles where the lists of cited literature contain several dozen references that are not even mentioned in the text of the article itself, and in general may have nothing to do with the topic of this article.

What is puzzling is that there seems to be a good demand for such services, and if there is a demand, there is also a supply. The reason for this is also understandable - the universal and, most importantly, very formal use of bibliometric indicators to assess the scientific activities of scientists and scientific organizations, including material incentives for achieving certain values ​​of these indicators. Instead of focusing on quality scientific research, employees of scientific organizations are trying by hook or by crook to achieve an increase in these indicators. As a result, we are forced to spend more and more time identifying and deleting such pseudoscientific publications, and, of course, this does not contribute to the image of the RSCI.

This trend can be effectively combated if conditions are provided under which it will be simply pointless to engage in the creation of such journals, the organization of all kinds of correspondence conferences and the release of non-reviewed collections of articles; offset the demand for such publications. We are already taking certain steps in this direction, although not everything here depends on us. The launch last year of the Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI) project, which singles out a collection of the best scientific journals from all Russian journals indexed in the RSCI, is one of such steps. Based on this collection, as well as articles by Russian scientists published in journals indexed in Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus , the so-called "RSCI core" is defined. For this core, we have already begun to calculate our bibliometric indicators separately. In contrast to indicators calculated for the entire RSCI database, which rather characterize the gross publication activity of scientists and organizations, indicators based on the RSCI core provide an assessment of its most qualitative part. By the way, it is planned to add other types of publications to the core of the RSCI (in particular, monographs, conference proceedings), selecting the best from what is available in the RSCI.

The second serious step, which I would like to mention, concerns the entire RSCI database. We have prepared a new regulation for placing journals in the RSCI, which provides for annual monitoring of the quality of indexed journals, identification of journals that are engaged in cheating indicators, and their removal from the database. We have powerful analytical tools that make it easy to find such journals and such diagrams. Of course, peer review will also be used. Thus, we are talking about the fact that not all journals that call themselves scientific and are ready to provide data will be indexed in the RSCI, but only journals that do not violate the generally accepted rules of scientific ethics.

It is dangerous here, as they say, "throw out the baby with the water." It is clear that there are many journals that are aimed at students, graduate students, and young scientists. Of course, articles in such journals do not reach the level of authoritative international journals. Nevertheless, the existence of these publications is not only justified, but also necessary from the point of view of education and vocational training new generations of Russian scientists. The main thing is that these journals work according to the same rules as their more reputable counterparts. Scientific peer review in publications of this level plays, perhaps, even more important role, since it also has an educational function, it helps to accustom young scientists from the very beginning to the fact that publishing somehow designed scientific hack is just “not comme il faut”.

As a result of these steps, the placement of articles in pseudo-journals and collections of pseudo-conference proceedings will simply become meaningless, since these publications, most likely, simply will not get into the RSCI. Well, it is absolutely certain that such journals will not get into the core of the RSCI, since publications there undergo a thorough peer review. Therefore, one can hope that such journals will naturally die out on their own.

- What are the main trends in the development of the RSCI, the composition of information, the growth dynamics of the number of Russian journals, participants? How is RSCI different from other databases?

The RSCI is really very different from such well-known and authoritative scientific citation databases as Web of Science and Scopus . First, according to the principle of formation. Web of Science and Scopus select the best magazines from all over the world and include them in their entirety in the database. The RSCI has a different task - to analyze the publication activity of Russian scientists. Therefore, the RSCI collects all publications of Russian authors, regardless of their scientific level and where they are published. There are already more than 9 million such publications.

The second feature of the RSCI is the sources of publications taken into account. Some still believe that the resource processes only Russian scientific journals. In fact, almost all possible types of scientific publications are loaded and processed in the RSCI. These are monographs and collections. scientific articles, and proceedings of conferences, and dissertations, and patents, and scientific reports, and preprints, etc. In particular, the RSCI takes into account articles by Russian authors in foreign journals that the RSCI does not independently index. These articles are purchased annually from the Scopus database. All this makes it possible to more comprehensively and objectively analyze the publication activity of Russian scientists in various scientific fields and assess the level of their research.

RSCI is also unique in that on a single platform and in a single search engine there is not only a bibliographic citation database, but also a huge full-text resource eLIBRARY. EN . This integration provides new opportunities for both projects. For example, library readers can use navigation through citing or cited publications, and RSCI users can not be limited to the scientist's scientometric indicators, but read his articles in detail, especially since the full texts of most of them are in the public domain.

The integration of two projects allowed us to add another one to the RSCI last year unique opportunity. If we have the full text of the publication, then we show the so-called reference context in the lists of cited literature, i.e. a small piece of text that mentions the cited work. This most often allows you to understand why such a link was made in this article. After all, quoting can be different, including even negative ones.

Well, the last thing I would like to mention, if we are talking about the distinctive features of the RSCI, is that the resource is in the public domain. This means that all Russian scientists, without exception, can not only use its search engine, but also get a full set of scientometric indicators calculated in the RSCI for all authors, organizations, journals, etc. The high cost of access to foreign science citation databases, of course, makes it somewhat difficult to use them on a national scale.

- Tell us more about the information and analytical system Science Index. What are the main services for different categories of participants in this project: authors, publishers, organizations?

Science Index is also a unique project that distinguishes RSCI from Web of Science and Scopus. In addition to additional analytical capabilities, it allows you to effectively solve the problem that all manufacturers of such large databases are struggling with. This is the difficulty of identifying and normalizing information. Each author of the article, each affiliation, each link must be uniquely identified, i.e. linked to a specific scientist, scientific organization or publication in the database. Considering that there are a lot of spelling variants, abbreviations, translations, linking formats, and simply errors in the source data, it is completely impossible to do this automatically, and manual identification is so expensive that even such large companies cannot afford it. international companies like Thomson Reuters or Elsevier.

In our opinion, the only real way to solve this problem is the wide involvement of scientists themselves, as well as representatives of scientific organizations and publishing houses, in correcting, clarifying, and identifying their data (i.e., data about their publications and citations). And this is exactly the path we took by launching the Science Index system.

Now I can definitely say that this approach justified itself. There are more and more scientists who not only registered in the Science Index and received a unique author code (SPIN code), but also made it a rule to visit elibrary.ru every few months and check their lists of publications and citations. In total, more than 370 thousand Russian scientists have already registered in the system. Considering that, according to our data, there are about 410 thousand researchers in the country (this is the number of unique authors who have at least one publication in the RSCI over the past five years), 90% of Russian scientists already have their own profiles in the Science Index system.

Registered authors can independently identify their publications or links, which for some reason are not automatically linked to this scientist. That is, it turns out that the quality of information, and hence the bibliometric indicators of a scientist, depend, among other things, on his own activity. This is especially important for authors with common surnames, when it is quite difficult for the system to make a decision on attributing this publication to one or another of the namesakes.

The next step in the development of the Science Index was the launch of a system focused on scientific organizations. There are already many more opportunities, including representatives of organizations can add publications of their employees, who for some reason did not get into the RSCI. Each such publication is checked by our operators and only after that it enters the RSCI.

Unique to the system is also the ability to analyze publication activity at the level of not only the entire organization, but also its structural divisions or individual scientists. The system also includes a large section with infographics, where you can visually analyze the publication activity of the organization, including comparing it with other organizations within individual reference groups. Number of Russian scientific organizations - subscribersof this service already exceeds 800.

On the way - Science Index for publishers. There are even more opportunities, but we will talk about them when we launch this system. It's not long to wait.

- Share the results of a project with Thomson Reuters to place 1,000 Russian scientific journals on the Web of Science platform. From open sources it became known that only 652 journals were included in the project. Tell us what criteria were used to select and what are the requirements for inclusion in WoS of new journals.

It was originally planned that the database Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI) ) the Web of Science platform can include up to 1 thousand Russian journals (rice. 2). However, we did not set ourselves the goal of necessarily immediately reaching this level. The peer review showed that only 652 journals are already ready for inclusion in this database. Of course, there are still quite a few publications that almost meet the necessary requirements and, accordingly, can be added at the next stages of the project.

The main criterion for evaluating the journal was the quality of scientific articles published in it. There were no presets for experts. Even factors such as the considerable age of the journal, its popularity, its inclusion in the list of the Higher Attestation Commission, the Web of Science or Scopus databases were not decisive. That is why the list includes not only the oldest and authoritative Russian journals, but also some relatively young publications, individual highly specialized journals, which may not be very well known to most scientists, but are leading in their narrow field. Conversely, some journals, even those included in WoS and Scopus, did not make it into the RSCI.

Also, no quotas were set in advance for certain areas of scientific knowledge. As a result, it turned out that the share of selected journals in those scientific areas that are better developed in the country turned out to be higher (mainly natural sciences). And vice versa, in those areas that look weaker (for example, social, agricultural, medical sciences), despite the large number of journals in these areas in the RSCI, the share of journals selected in the RSCI turned out to be smaller. However, if we compare the thematic distribution of Russian journals in WoS and RSCI, then in RSCI journals in various scientific fields are presented much more evenly.

Peer review of journals was carried out in several stages. At the first stage, bibliometric indicators were calculated for all Russian journals represented in the RSCI. It was a whole set of criteria that allows a comprehensive assessment of the level of the journal according to bibliometric data.

At the second stage, a wide public examination of journals in various scientific areas was carried out. On the site eLIBRARY. EN the experts filled out questionnaires in which each journal in the list in a certain scientific area should be assigned one of the levels that reflects its quality, from the point of view of an expert.

To participate in the peer review, a scientist had to be registered in the Science Index system as an author of scientific publications, have degree candidate or doctor of science and the total number of citations of publications for five years (2009–2013) is not less than a certain threshold, which differs for different scientific areas. The threshold values ​​were determined in such a way as to select 10% of the best authors in terms of this indicator in each of the scientific areas, i.e. ensure equal proportional representation of scientists in different fields of knowledge. In total, invitations to take part in the examination were sent out to more than 30 thousand scientists.

The results of the bibliometric evaluation and public review were submitted to the working groups of experts for their consideration and consideration in the process of making the final decision on the inclusion of the journal in RSCI.

Journals will be monitored annually for evaluation and inclusion in the RSCI database, and the list of incoming journals is likely to expand gradually. At the same time, the opposite situation is also possible, when a journal found, for example, in violation of scientific ethics, in particular, in using various schemes for cheating bibliometric indicators will be excluded from the database.

And finally, I would like to note that the inclusion of a journal in the RSCI list does not mean that all its issues are automatically included in the Web of Science. Many journals lack some of the information necessary to prepare data in accordance with the requirements of Web of Science, not to mention the fact that some journals are missing some issues, especially archival ones. There are many problems with the design of lists of cited literature in articles. Therefore, together with the editors of the selected journals, we still have to big job to bring the quality of information on these journals in the RSCI to an acceptable level.

- Obviously, despite the measures taken by the Russian Ministry of Education and Science, the publication activity of Russian scientists is still extremely low. It will take a lot of time for the infrastructure, language culture, and the system to motivate scientists to publishing activities to be formed. However, articles by Russian researchers are often “not visible” in databases due to incorrect formatting of metadata. What intellectual methods does your service offer for a more accurate assessment of the scientific activity of a scientist, analysis of his publication activity?

The problem is rather not the low publication activity of Russian scientists. It seems to me that just due to various administrative mechanisms, the motivation is already quite sufficient. Judge for yourself. Russian scientists produce more than 900 thousand scientific publications per year different types, of which almost 600 thousand are articles in scientific journals. And this is not all, but only those that are uploaded to the RSCI. And from this stream only 40 thousand, i.e. no more than 7% are included in the authoritative international databases Web of Science and Scopus.

So the problem is not how to stimulate general publishing activity, but how to achieve an increase in the number of high-quality scientific publications. It may not be necessary to require a scientist to write a new article every month, publishing still “raw” or incomplete results, but it is better to do it once a year, but then it will be really serious, solid work. And now, after all, it is already reaching the point of absurdity: scientific organizations are required to plan for the number of publications for several years ahead.

That the publications of Russian scientists in international databases are simply not visible, and in fact there are much more of them, is a myth that the leadership and some of our colleagues are trying to console themselves with. Well, yes, our scientists do not always indicate their Russian affiliation, especially when they work in foreign countries. There are problems with the identification of articles in some Russian journals, including the problem of accounting for translated versions. But this does not fundamentally change the picture: there are few really good publications.

This does not mean that the issues of the correct design of articles and links to them do not need to be paid attention. And this is not only the task of the authors of publications. It is rather difficult for them, especially for young scientists, to deal with various formats of references in the lists of cited literature. The control and correction of these data is a direct function of the editors of scientific journals, which, unfortunately, they often neglect. .

- Taking into account the difficult economic situation, the peculiarities of the distribution of scientific content, there are many discussions in professional community arises in relation to the promotion and sale of journals: by subscription or by providing articles in the public domain. Is it possible to achieve balance and find optimal models distribution of scientific content so that publishers can monetize their services, and scientists can more actively promote their research among colleagues?

I may have a somewhat conservative point of view, but I am a supporter of the classic magazine distribution model. This model has one important advantage - it is self-regulating. Readers, subscribing to a magazine or paying for articles, actually vote with their money for its quality. It is unlikely that anyone will buy a magazine that does not represent any interest. Accordingly, the magazine, having earned this money, gets an opportunity for its further development and quality improvement. At the same time, the number of subscribers is growing, the publication is earning more more money etc. All that is required of a journal is to publish quality articles. If he cannot do this, then everything works exactly the opposite, and the magazine gradually dies.

In the case when we reverse the scheme, i.e. It is not the consumer of information who pays for the publication, but the author or some third party (for example, an organization or foundation), then natural selection in the publishing environment is violated. Agree, it is even morally more difficult to refuse an author who brought money to the editorial office and not publish his article, not to mention the fact that he most likely will not come to this journal next time. As a result, the publishing house becomes, in fact, just a printing house that prints (or places on the Internet) everything that the authors bring. The author, in turn, begins to consider the publication of an article as a kind of service provided to him by the publishing house for money.

The OA publishing author scheme only works well for reputable international publishers that value their reputation and for which publication of individual journals or selected OA articles is not the primary distribution scheme. What this leads to in Russia, we can see by the huge number of frankly weak Russian journals that are placed in the public domain simply because it makes no sense to announce a subscription to them: no one will subscribe anyway.

Sometimes one hears the opinion that placing a journal in the public domain dramatically increases its visibility and, accordingly, its citation. Yes, it does, but the visibility of a magazine is not at all the same as its relevance. If articles in a journal are weak, no one will cite them, even if it is posted on a thousand sites on the Internet.

As for e LIBRARY . EN , then we equally respect any decision of a publisher to choose a distribution scheme for their journals and technically support all options. The only advice we usually give to subscription-based journals is to move the archives to open access after a year. This has practically no effect on the subscription, and it can contribute to the growth of the journal's citation.

- A huge amount of information is in free access, Open Access Publishing services are being actively promoted. How does the appearance of such services affect your projects?

Open access services, for all their seeming attractiveness to the consumer of information, have a downside. It is known after all that free cheese is only in a mousetrap. There is a price to pay for everything, and the price in this case is our time. Yes, there is a huge amount of information and it is open, but how much time should we spend to find in this bottomless space what we really need, given that this space mostly consists of informational garbage? And how not to miss something important?

To make something worthwhile, whether it be a magazine or a service, in any case, some means are needed. Of course, at the current level of development information technologies technically publishing an article on a website or in an open archive is not difficult. And it might even turn out to be quite a decent article. Or maybe not. No one will give you a guarantee. The key point that distinguishes a scientific journal is the peer review of all published articles. Reviewing is a kind of self-defense of the scientific community from the flow of pseudoscientific, hacky, stolen works. It creates a kind of zone of trust for scientists, highlighting the information that can be trusted and that is worth spending precious time studying.

Reviewing is the most important, but not the only function of scientific publishing. There are a number of other operations that are necessary in order to present a scientific article to the scientific community in the most convenient and familiar form for it. This includes high-quality layout, and translation, and proofreading, and scientific editing, and design of references, and compliance with terminology accepted in this field, and style of presentation, and much more. All this requires time, appropriate specialists and, ultimately, money, which in any case needs to be taken from somewhere.

In the open access model, this money cannot be taken from the subscriber, so either they don’t exist at all, or they are taken from the author of the publication, from whom you can’t take much in our realities either. Therefore, most of the above functions are simply omitted, which naturally affects the quality of such logs. That is why the attitude towards Russian open access journals in the domestic scientific community is very dismissive.

- How, in your opinion, will the system of dissemination of scientific information change in the coming years? What new effective models will appear, what role will recommendation and expert services play? Is it possible to monetize such projects?

I do not think that in the coming years something will change radically. A major revolution in this area has already taken place. Recommendation services are now a really fashionable trend, but for scientific information, it seems to me, they are hardly applicable. We can even advise a stranger what new movie he should watch, what book to read or what hotel to stay in, and with a high probability it will be useful to him. In the field of scientific interests, the probability of such a hit is much less, since modern scientific activity is characterized by a narrow specialization of scientists. For such a system to work effectively, it is necessary to have a wide participation of scientists in it, which is very difficult to organize.

Nevertheless, some projects can be quite successful, so you should not be afraid and experiment in this direction. As an example, I can cite the public review of Russian scientific journals, which we conducted last year in order to select the best publications for inclusion in the RSCI database. About 30 thousand of the most authoritative Russian scientists in all scientific fields were involved in this assessment. We received about 13,000 questionnaires, 240,000 separate ratings for journals, and 2,800 text comments from experts with the argumentation of the rating or clarification of the subject headings of the journal. And this despite the fact that the survey took place at the end of the summer, when most scientists are usually on vacation. So the result is quite positive.

But with the monetization of such services in the field of scientific information, it will be more difficult. It is usually carried out by motivating the visitor to additional purchases of goods or services sold on the site. In this case, it may be the sale of individual articles, books or magazines. However, in our experience and that of other scientific information providers, individual subscribers make up only a small fraction of all sales. The main subscription goes either centrally through consortiums or through scientific organizations. And work with such subscribers is based on completely different principles.

- Another trend is the development of scientific social networks and communities and the “attachment” of various services to them (for example, the Mendeley project). Are you developing similar areas of communication?

Yes, we have such a project in the works. But only it will not be a social network, but rather a professional one. Social networks where you can create a community and chat, and that's enough. The problem is that these networks act like a drug for many. People are beginning to spend more and more time on correspondence in such networks, and this prevents them from focusing on work. We wouldn't want the site elibrary.ru, which is still positioned as a professional site for scientists, to have any projects that distract a person from work. For the same reason, there are practically no annoying ads on our site. Another thing is if these are some useful services that help scientists jointly solve problems that arise in the course of their professional activities.

There are good prerequisites for creating such a network. This is, in particular, the fact that almost all Russian scientists are already registered in the Science Index system and we know quite a lot about them: in what scientific direction they work, how successful they are, what they read, who they quote, etc. On this basis, we already have a system for searching and selecting experts to solve various problems related to the evaluation of scientific activities (projects, grants, etc.).

- How do you build interaction with suppliers of non-scientific journals? What new services do you offer content providers?

The elibrary.ru portal was originally created as a repository of exclusively scientific information, so we simply do not accept non-scientific journals. We don't even have popular scientific literature. Another thing is that among those journals that are already published and call themselves scientific, not all of them can actually be considered as such. Still, the main feature of a scientific journal is the review of incoming manuscripts, i. the presence of an expert function that allows you to select only worthy scientific work. But with this, just a lot of magazines have problems. More precisely, we have problems with such journals, because it is very problematic to check the fact of reviewing articles. That is, it is difficult to cut off such logs at the entrance on formal grounds. This requires expert and bibliometric evaluation of articles in each journal. But in order to conduct them, you first need to have these articles in the database. That is why we initially accept all journals in the RSCI, and only then determine their real quality.

Of the new services for content providers, one can note the possibility of placing in the NEL not only scientific journals, but also various non-periodical publications (monographs, dissertations, conference proceedings, collections of articles, etc.). This opportunity is now provided not only to scientific publishers, but also to the authors of these publications.

It is also necessary to mention various integration services. We have developed an API for automatic receipt information from the RSCI, including for obtaining up-to-date bibliometric indicators. A number of our partners (expert organizations, producers of databases containing scientific information, ELS, major publishing houses, universities, etc.) are already using this opportunity.

- What are the strategies in relations with domestic and foreign clients? What new options and services for libraries have appeared / will appear on your platform in the near future?

We also try not to forget about our subscribers. Of those opportunities that have appeared recently, one can single out a bonus option for organizations that subscribe simultaneously to the Science Index system and full-text journals in the NEB. These organizations can create their own in the Science Index system organizational structure and assign employees to their departments. Accordingly, these employees have the opportunity to work with full-text resources on elibrary.ru not only from the organization's computers, but also from home or any other place. This is really very convenient, since many scientists are engaged in searching, studying literature, writing articles at home.

The system of statistics is also being finalized, which will allow subscriber organizations to get a more detailed idea of ​​which journals are more in demand, which departments of the organization are more active in terms of using available information resources etc.

The end of the outgoing 2015 was marked by an important event for Russian science: on December 17, the division for scientific research and intellectual property of Thomson Reuters, and the scientific electronic library eLibrary.ru announced the placement of a database of the best scientific journals in Russia - Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI) on the platform Web of Science (WoS). RSCI is a separate database that is not part of the core Web of Science Core Collection, but is fully integrated with the WoS search platform.

The RSCI database includes 652 Russian journals carefully selected from the collection of the Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI). The integration of the core of the RSCI collection with the world-famous WoS platform will significantly increase the accessibility of Russian journals in the international scientific arena. From now on, tens of millions of WoS users from different corners planets will have direct access to RSCI, and Russian research will be displayed on a par with research from other countries. Compared to the set of Russian journals already included in the WoS Core Collection, the RSCI database contains more comprehensive publications in the fields of engineering, medical, agricultural, humanities and social sciences.

Oleg Utkin, Head of Thomson Reuters IP & Science in Russia, said at a press conference: “It is a great honor for us to place the database of the best Russian scientific journals Russian Science Citation Index on the Web of Science platform and to acquaint the international scientific community with the results of Russian researchers.” .

As Pavel Kasyanov, an expert on scientometrics at Thomson Reuters in Russia, said, to date, even English-language publications in Russian scientific journals indexed in the RSCI are rarely cited, which, apparently, is due to the low availability of the eLibrary.ru web service for the world scientific community. communities. Translation of at least titles, keywords and abstracts of scientific articles on English language and their placement in a database integrated with WoS will overcome this barrier. In addition, the new database will greatly facilitate the search for scientific information for Russian scientists themselves. In December 2015, free test access to the RSCI database on the WoS platform will be provided. The grace period may be extended to January 2016. Negotiations are underway at the level of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation to provide access to the new database to all scientific organizations in Russia.

The second most important function of the created RSCI database is to improve the quality of Russian scientific publications and bring them to the level international standards. According to statistics provided by Gennady Eremenko (Head of the Scientific Electronic Library eLibrary.ru), there are now about 400 thousand scientists in Russia (scientists who have at least one publication in the last 5 years). To date, 8.7 million publications and more than 5,000 Russian journals have been included in the RSCI database; this list is constantly updated. In 2015, about 800 thousand publications indexed by the RSCI were published. At the same time, the RSCI does not make any qualitative selection of indexed papers. That's why milestone The creation of the RSCI database was the selection of the best journals across the spectrum of scientific fields.

Evaluation and careful selection of Russian scientific journals were carried out by the Working Group based on the results of a multi-level examination. Members of the Working Group led the relevant thematic (by subject heading Web of Science) expert councils. Its members included:

• A. I. Grigoriev (Chairman working group), Vice-President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Chairman of the Scientific Publishing Council of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Scientific Director of the Research Center of the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences (biological and other natural sciences are interdisciplinary journals)
• A. A. Baranov, Director of the Scientific Center for Children's Health (Medical and Health Sciences)
• L. M. Gokhberg, First Vice-Rector, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Director, Institute for Statistical Research and Economics of Knowledge, National Research University Higher School of Economics (Social Sciences and Humanities)
• G. O. Eremenko, CEO National Electronic Library (NEB) (advisory council for bibliometrics)
• E. N. Kablov, President of the Association of State Research Centers, Director General of the All-Russian Institute of Aviation Materials Federal State Unitary Enterprise (engineering and technical sciences)
• VV Kozlov, Vice-President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Director of the Mathematical Institute. V. A. Steklov of the Russian Academy of Sciences (mathematical, computer and information sciences)
• Yu. F. Lachuga, Academician-Secretary of the Department of Agricultural Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences (agricultural sciences)
• N. V. Sobolev, Senior Researcher, Institute of Geology and Mineralogy. V. S. Sobolev RAS (geological sciences)
• A. R. Khokhlov, Vice-Rector of the Lomonosov Moscow State University M.V. Lomonosov (Physical sciences - physical sciences and Chemical sciences - chemical sciences)
• A. Ya. Nazarenko, NISO RAS, scientific secretary of the working group.

The heads of thematic areas formed expert councils, involving leading scientists, representatives of various scientific organizations (profile departments and research centers of the Russian Academy of Sciences, federal and research universities, state research centers, etc.) in the examination. It should be especially noted that the expert councils included not only metropolitan specialists, but also representatives of the regions, for example, scientists from St. Petersburg, the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, etc.

The list of journals indexed by the RSCI and their bibliometric indicators (more than 30 indicators presented in the electronic library eLibrary.ru) were used as primary information. Then the publications were independently evaluated at meetings of expert councils and the Working Group, as well as by the method of public examination of journals by leading Russian scientists.

Public review has become a significant innovation in the evaluation system of journals indexed by Thomson Reuters services (for example, journals included in the Web of Science Core Collection are evaluated only by an expert council located in Philadelphia, USA). During the public examination in each scientific area, 10% of scientists with the highest bibliometric indicators were selected. Each expert evaluated the journals in the competence of his field, distributing scientific publications into four corresponding quality levels. In total, 12,800 expert questionnaires and 240,000 journal evaluations were submitted, and 2,800 expert comments were compiled with the argumentation of the evaluation or clarification of the thematic heading of the journal. An interesting result of the work carried out was the identity of the ratings received by the journals from the Working Group and during the public examination. However, when making the final decision on the inclusion (or exclusion) of the journal in the RSCI database, the opinion of the Working Group was given priority.

At the beginning of work on the creation of the RSCI database, it was planned to select 1000 of the best Russian scientific journals. However, during the examination, the working group found it possible to include only 652 journals in the database. Fully electronic editions were selected on a par with the traditional "paper". When selecting journals, no quotas were provided for various scientific fields. Many publications were selected that publish works in Russian (in particular, on Russian cultural studies, where publication in foreign languages ​​is inappropriate). At the same time, the collection of RSCI journals differs from the RSCI in the direction of a decrease in the share of multidisciplinary publications and journals in the humanities and social sciences. It is also worth noting that not all Russian journals included in the Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus were included in the RSCI database.

Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Anatoly Ivanovich Grigoriev has repeatedly mentioned that the work of experts will continue in close cooperation with Thomson Reuters and the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation. During the press conference, the need for constant updating of the list of journals included in the RSCI database was repeatedly mentioned (at least once a year). Recommendations are being developed for journals wishing to get into both the RSCI database and the Web of Science Core Collection. New journals appearing in Russia are being monitored: if a high level of such journals is maintained for 1-2 years, they will be included in the RSCI database. It also provides for the possibility of excluding journals from RSCI in case of a drop in their quality.

Leonid Gokhberg, First Vice-Rector of the National Research University Higher School of Economics, spoke in more detail about the negative factors preventing a journal from being included in the RSCI database. Among them, the lack of reviews of published works, paid publication of works bypassing peer review, the lack of adequate lists of cited literature in articles, reduced requirements of the editorial board of the journal for the works of young researchers, as well as the use of various mechanisms for "cheating" bibliometric indicators. Separately, it was mentioned that analytical and purely practical publications (especially in the field of social sciences and humanities) cannot be considered scientific, and the corresponding publications will not be entered into the RSCI database.

Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexei Removich Khokhlov separately raised the issue of the correctness of the list of journals of the Higher attestation commission(VAK), containing more than 2000 publications, in the light of the results of the peer review of Russian scientific journals. The participants of the press conference actively supported the need to revise the list of publications, publications in which are counted in the defense of candidate and doctoral dissertations. Leonid Gokhberg announced the need to give the RSCI base an official legal status and be guided by it when evaluating the effectiveness of researchers, teachers, considering applications for scientific grants, etc. The special value of the list of RSCI journals lies in the fact that it is not formed legislatively "from above", but "grows from below" based on the opinion of the scientific community.

In conclusion, the members of the Working Group expressed their hope that the creation of a new database of scientific journals in Russia and its integration with the Web of Science platform (Thomson Reuters) will contribute to an adequate assessment of the work of Russian scientists in government bodies and in society, and will also contribute to the establishment of Russia's international relations not only in science, but also in other areas.

In September 2014, Thomson Reuters (Currently Clarivate Analytics) and the Scientific Electronic Library (NEB) entered into an agreement to place the core of the best Russian journals from the RSCI on the Web of Science platform. The goal of the project is to select the best Russian journals in the RSCI and place them on the Web of Science platform in the form of a separate Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI) database, similar to how it was done with the Chinese and Latin American science citation indices. According to this agreement, by the end of 2015 this database will include up to 1000 leading Russian journals in all scientific areas (all issues over the past 10 years).

Placing the RSCI on the Web of Science platform and identifying mutual citations between publications in Web of Science and RSCI will significantly improve the visibility of Russian scientific journals in the international information space, which is especially important for social sciences and the humanities. For Russian journals included in the RSCI, this will be a kind of springboard for their promotion to the core of Web of Science.

The selection of journals will be carried out in two stages. At the first stage, a preliminary list of the best Russian journals will be formed, selected using bibliometric indicators and formal criteria. At the second stage, this list will be refined through peer review and public discussion.

A working group has been created to organize the work on the evaluation and selection of Russian scientific journals. Chairman of the working group: Chairman of the NISO RAS, Vice-President of the RAS A.I. Grigoriev. Deputy Chairman: 1st Vice-Rector of the National Research University Higher School of Economics, Director of the Institute for Statistical Research and Economics of Knowledge L.M. Gohberg. The working group will include representatives of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Higher School of Economics, the NEB, leading universities and the State Scientific Center.

The selection of the core of the best journals in the RSCI will also allow solving other problems related to the analysis and evaluation of the effectiveness of scientific research in the country. Unlike the RSCI database, which indexes more than 4,000 Russian journals and aims to cover all the publications of Russian scientists as completely as possible, only the best Russian publications will be selected in RSCI. Getting into this database for a journal, author or scientific organization will be a criterion for a certain level of quality of scientific research.

This project will also contribute to:

1. Improving the quality of Russian scientific journals by bringing them up to international standards.

2. The growth of bibliometric indicators of Russian journals in the Web of Science and integral indicators Russia as a whole by identifying links to Russian-language versions of journals and increasing the visibility and citation of Russian journals in the world.

3. Creation of a system for assessing and monitoring the quality of scientific journals, combining the use of bibliometric information and peer review.

4. Improving the system for evaluating the effectiveness of scientific activity based on the inclusion of articles in the collection of the best Russian journals (the core of the RSCI).