The state of russian library and information sciences from the perspective of academic journals

Abstract

Scientific challenge: A study of the current state of library and information sciences via bibliometric analysis of scientific journals and their editorial board members, i. e. geographic distribution and bibliometric analysis of their scholarly output resulting in additional approaches to evaluate serials and scientific area.Purpose: Bibliometric analyses of journals and scholarly output and geographic distribution of their editorial board members being the most authoritative experts over the last 5 years; detection of large scientific centers of library and information science; detection of a core of academic journals.Originality: For the first time in Russian literature results of the analysis of editorial boards are described for additional evaluation of library and information science journals and relevant scientific areas in general. Due to a limited number of papers on analysis of editorial boards this paper can be used as methodological one as well.Findings: Analysis of geographic distribution enabled us to detect a share of foreign members of almost 25 percent. The largest groups of Russian experts are located in Moscow and Saint-Petersburg, but also in two regional centers of the European part of Russia – Voronezh and Samara, while only Novosibirsk is the center of the Siberian expert group in library and information science. Experts mainly work at universities, followed by research organizations of The Ministry of Science and Higher Education. Wide range of bibliometric indices of editorial board members correlates with that of relevant journals. Some approaches of editors to enhance journal indices are detected including publication of their own high-level papers in journals which they are working for since these papers are attracting a larger amount of citations as compared with papers of other authors. Another strategy assumes that editorial board members cite their own journal in other serials. Co-citation data of analyzed journals predominantly demonstrate the absence of strong connections between journals.Conclusions: Editorial boards play a significant role in enhancing bibliometric indices of journals, and stronger integration of Russian library and information science society is necessary which may result in increasing currently low ranks of the studied journals among international serials.