Russian Sociological Journals in International Scientometric Databases: What Should Be Taken into Account in a New Evaluation System

Abstract

The development of a national academic research evaluation system increases the relevance of bibliometric indicators for evaluating the quality of academic publications. The evaluation of journals included in international databases deserves special attention. This article analyzes the Russian sociological journals which are currently indexed in the Web of Science and Scopus, using their citation parameters. We find that journals can belong to different quartiles while having no comparable differences in their citation level. The qualitative analysis of citation sources reveals that some publications do not fully meet the impact criteria used for the most influential journals. This hinders their inclusion in the main database of the Social Sciences Citation Index. Our findings have practical implications for the choice of criteria to evaluate academic journals. We also identify the negative effects of the formalized use of quartile metrics for assessing the impact of academic research and propose mechanisms for their elimination.