National orientation of Ukrainian journals: means-ends decoupling in a semi-peripheral state

Abstract

Employing an institutionalist perspective, this article aims to explore the implementation of the global model of the international journal in Ukraine. Focusing on selected journals in the natural sciences, engineering, clinical medicine & biomedical sciences, and social sciences, the following aspects were determined: publication language, national distribution of authors and citations, and institutional distribution of authors. An Index of National Orientation of Publications (INO-P) and an Index of National Orientation of Citations (INO-C) were defined for 48 Ukrainian Scopus-indexed journals based on publications in 2014–2016 and citations to these publications in 2017. The outcomes show that in these 48 journals, publications and citations of Ukrainian authors amount to 68.2% and 51.8% respectively. There is no significant linear correlation between INO-P and the CiteScore of the journal but there is a negative correlation between INO-C and the CiteScore of the journal. The highest INO-P can be found in engineering (77.7%) and clinical medicine & biomedical sciences (78.0%) and the lowest INO-P have the social sciences (45.7%). It is concluded that as Ukrainian journals indexed in Scopus do not operate as quality outlets for international exchange of academic research results, they reflect a case of means–ends decoupling.