Analysis of the position of socio-humanitarian journals on the Science Index: old vs new

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to assess the extent to which the new methodology of calculating the Science Index integral index for scientific journals influences the change in the position of Russian socio-humanities journals indexed in the Web of Science and/or Scopus international databases, relative to past results and trends. These journals are chosen as the object of analysis due to the fact that the Science Index calculation is now performed according to the new methodology with normalization according to the RSCI core. The authors focus on the positioning of socio-humanitarian journals within the national publishing competition, taking into account theoretically possible and actual changes in scientometric indicators in dynamics.The study is based on the data of the analysis of publication activity of more than 130 Russian journals presented on the elibrary.ru platform from 2012–2021 before and after the change in the methodology of Science Index integral index calculation and subsequent recalculation. In the course of the study, the journals were ranked according to both the current 2021 indicators before and after the change in calculation methodology, and the retrospective indicators predicted using three time-series forecasting methods (ARIMA, nnetar and ETS) before and after the change in calculation methodology. The results of this study form an idea of the “attention demanding” impact of the implementation of the new Science Index calculation methodology, which significantly limits the number of journals considered for citation calculation, on the positions of individual publications and scientific fields and changes in the balance of the Russian scientific world as a whole.