Economic journal: problems and prospects of promotion at the national and international level

The journal “Economic and social changes: facts, trends, forecast” has been published by the Institute of Socio-Economic Development of Territories of the Russian

Academy of Sciences since 2008. It is particularly important that the foundation of the Journal was supported by the heads of other economic institutes under the Russian

Academy of Sciences that are located in the Northwestern Federal District of the Russian Federation. They participated directly in the formation of the Journal’s Editorial Council and Editorial Board. V.A. Ilyin, Doctor of Economics, Professor, Honored Science Worker of the Russian Federation is the founder and Chief Editor of the Journal.

In the first three years the Journal was published quarterly. Each issue was devoted to the topic, which was set out in the annual plan and had, in the opinion of the Editorial Council and Editorial Board, priority importance for the development of northern regions.

In that period the main section of the Journal – “Development strategy” – focused on the analysis of trends and results of market reforms in various regions of the North-West, on the substantiation of strategic directions, criteria for assessing the achievement of planned milestones and stages of their implementation2.

The issues of 2008 were devoted to the discussion of the regions’ transition to the innovation way of development, the increase of productivity in certain sectors, and in the whole regional economy. One of the key discussion topics was the development of the forest sector that possesses considerable reserves for growth in the North-West of Russia due to the presence of large areas of forest resources and years of experience of their use.

In 2009 the Journal published a series of articles on the boosting of small business, agro-industrial complex and provision of food security, on the prospects of machinebuilding and regional tourism development in the North-West of Russia. In response to the existing situation, the Journal published articles on the reasons of the financial crisis that had struck Russia, and also on the measures to overcome its consequences3.

The topics such as the improvement of the local government system, energy development and energy security in the regions and their social development were discussed in the Journal’s special issues of 2010. Besides, the authors considered different aspects of foreign economic activity that acquired considerable importance in the NWFD regions due to the specialization in raw materials and semi-finished products based on the extraction of iron ores and other mining and mineral resources.

As the number of the Journal’s annual issues increased from four to six in 2011 it became possible to shift from the subject planning to the problem planning. However, at present some sections still include articles selected by subject.

For instance, the series of articles published in 2012 in the framework of Russia-Belarus scientific cooperation within the Union State reveal the stages of development of this cooperation, development of common research space, development of trade and economic integration of the NWFD regions of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus, main trends in their sociodemographic processes associated primarily with health care, education and enhancement of people’s welfare4.

ISEDT RAS published a special issue of the Journal dedicated to the economic and social aspects of Russia-Belarus integration cooperation on the threshold of the 9th session of the Russia-Belarus InterAcademy Council on the Issues of Development of the Union State and the International Research-to-Practice Conference “Integration within the Union State as the main tool for the implementation of Russia and Belarus security strategy” that were held in the city of Vologda (July 3–5, 2013).

In 2012–2013, the Editorial Board directed its main efforts to select such articles, which revealed the reasons for slowdown in the recovery of Russia’s economy in general and in the context of its territories, the ways to overcome factors hampering the country’s transition to innovation development. A new selection of publications was formed by the materials on the influence of the interests of private corporations’ owners on the formation of regional budgets and increase in the regions’ public debt5. During these years the Journal published several articles on the content and stages of socio-cultural modernization, without which it is impossible to enhance economic efficiency and eliminate excessive income differentiation6.

One of the factors indicating the growth in the Journal’s quality and scientific level is its inclusion in the List of leading scientific titles recommended by the Higher Attestation Commission for publication of the main findings of Candidate’s and Doctor’s of Sciences dissertations.

Today we can say with confidence that during the six years that passed since its first issue, the journal “Economic and social changes: facts, trends, forecast” has gained its own niche in the field of economic periodicals.

About 500 scientific articles were published during this period. In recent years the volumes of the Journal’s issues has been constantly increasing (tab. 1) .

The tendency towards the growth of the total number of published articles indirectly indicates the systematic increase in the scale of research and the enhancement of research activity.

The title has acquired a fairly large group of contributors; besides, the geographic distribution of authors has been steadily increasing from year to year.

Table 1. Dynamics of the number of scientific articles published in the journal “Economic and social changes: facts, trends, forecast” in 2008–2014

Year	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014*
Total number of scientific articles per year	41	48	56	95	106	99	36
Number of articles as calculated per issue	10.25	12.0	14.0	15.8	17.7	16.5	18.0
* Taking into consideration the articles from issues 1 and 2 (2014).

The Journals’ Editorial Board is implementing several measures to attract foreign contributors. The Journal’s founder considers that a modern scientific title should be not just a platform for scientific discussions among domestic scientists, but also a platform that combines the achievements of researchers from different countries. Without meeting this condition, the task of advancing Russian scientific titles to the world, will remain unsolved.

In the past period the Journal published works of scientists from China, Poland, France, Finland, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine. At that, the share of foreign articles in the last three years was more than 10% of the total number of publications in the Journal (tab. 2) .

It should be noted that a significant share in the total number of foreign publications in the Journal belongs to the scientists from Belarus (56.5%) and China (28.2) (fig. 1) that can be considered the result of close cooperation between ISEDT RAS, the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus and Jiangxi Academy of Social Sciences (China). In addition, the fact that scientific cooperation with colleagues from abroad has been brought to a higher level is supported by joint publications of ISEDT RAS scientists and foreign authors, in particular, the contributors from Belarus.

As the data in table 3 shows, the geographic distribution of Russian contributors to Journal is constantly expanding.

Thus, the authors from eight Federal Districts, two federal cities and more than 20 regions of the Russian Federation published their articles in the Journal on average for the period under review. Moreover, the highest

Table 2. Dynamics of the number of foreign articles* published in the journal “Economic and social changes: facts, trends, forecast” in 2008–2014

Indicator	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014**
Number of foreign articles	2	1	8	5	14	12	4
Share of foreign articles in the total number of publications, %	4.9	2.1	14.2	5.6	13.2	12.1	11.1
* Including joint publications by Russian and foreign authors. ** Data for the first half-year of 2014.

Table 3. Dynamics of the number of Russian Federation subjects and Federal Districts*, from which the authors have published articles in the journal “Economic and social changes: facts, trends, forecast” in 2008–2014

Indicator	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014**
Number of RF subjects	7	8	8	10	15	15	11
Number of Federal Districts	3	3	5	6	7	6	7
* Including the city of federal significance. ** Data for the first half-year of 2014.

Figure 1. Share of foreign articles in the total number of publications in the journal “Economic and social changes: facts, trends, forecast” in 2008–2014

proportion of publications belongs to the authors from the Northwestern Federal District (fig. 2) . As for the Russian Federation subjects, among them we can point out Moscow, Saint Petersburg; Krasnoyarsk, Perm, Stavropol and Khabarovsk Krais; Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug; the Republics of Komi, Karelia, Bashkortostan,

Mordovia and Udmurtia; the Vologda, Arkhangelsk, Murmansk, Pskov, Kaliningrad, Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Ulyanovsk, Sverdlovsk, Novosibirsk, Kemerovo, Volgograd and Rostov oblasts.

Judging by the figures for 2008 and 2013, i.e. the initial and final publication periods of the Journal, the representation of the Federal

Figure 2. The share of articles of Russian authors ranked by Federal Districts in the total amount of Russian publications in the journal “Economic and social changes: facts, trends, forecast” in 2008–2014

Districts in the Journal has increased twice (from 3 to 6 respectively) and the subjects of the Russian Federation – more than twice (from 7 to 15).

The expanding geographic distribution of contributors indicates that the journal “Economic and social changes: facts, trends, forecast” is gaining an increasing recognition in the Russian scientific community and among the readers of scientific literature.

The Editorial Council plays an important role in the formation and development of the Journal. The Council currently comprises 23 authoritative Russian and foreign scientists. Among them there are Academicians and Corresponding Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctors of Sciences, heads of RAS institutes, Academicians of the

NAS of Belarus and prominent researchers from France, Finland and China. Every year the members of the Editorial Council take part in the expert assessment of the title, in which they analyze the quality of published materials and make proposals regarding the Journal’s development. It should be stressed that the involvement of the Editorial Council into the handling of tasks on the Journal’s development is productive, because it makes it possible to sum up various expert opinions and choose the optimal route for the promotion of the title, using modern organizational and information technology.

What exactly has been done in this direction, and what measures are being implemented now? First of all, note that the information about the articles published in

Figure 3. Dynamics of the total number of citations of the journal “Economic and social changes: facts, trends, forecast” in RSCI (as of July 15, 2014)

Figure 4. Dynamics of self-citation coefficient of the journal “Economic and social changes: facts, trends, forecast” in RSCI (as of July 15, 2014)

II 2-year self-citation coefficient □ 5-year self-citation coefficient the Journal regularly goes to the database of the All-Russian Institute for Scientific and Technical Information under the Russian Academy of Sciences (VINITI RAS), which is the largest information center engaged in the issues of Exact, Natural and Technical Sciences.

The journal is indexed in the Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI) – the national information-analytical system, which accumulates publications of Russian authors, as well as citations of these publications, received from more than 4000 Russian journals.

Today the RSCI data make it possible to evaluate a title on a number of scientometric indicators. Although, currently, the global citation indices7 are considered to be the target parameters for assessing the quality and productivity of scientific activity of individual scientists, scientific journals and organizations, the use of their indicators does not give an objective picture for evaluating the activity of Russian scientists, because domestic publications are poorly represented in the international databases [9].

Earlier, the Journal wrote about the general approaches to scientometric analysis of activity of scientific institutions and provided the estimated characteristics of publication activity of ISEDT RAS and its titles on the basis of the statistical data of the Russian Science Citation Index8. Here we should emphasize again that in our opinion, a journal’s impact factor and citation metrics are the most important indicators in the assessment of the publication activity of the scientific journal on the basis of bibliometric indicators. We must bear in mind the fact that the total number of publications can only serve as a primary criterion for evaluation of research and publication activity of an institution. This indicator does not provide information on the quality of scientific products and its relevance. Therefore, it is advisable to use citation indicators for a more objective assessment of the quality of a scientific title [11,12,14,15].

The total number of citations of the journal “Economic and social changes: facts, trends, forecast” in RSCI is increasing. The growth rate in 2012, compared with the previous year, amounted to 338% (fig. 3) . This indicator shows indirectly that there is a certain improvement in the quality of the materials published in the Journal and the increase of demand for them.

However, the analysis has shown that along with the increase in the number of citations in 2012, the ratio of Journal’s selfcitations also increased ⁹ (fig. 4) .

On the one hand, the growth of selfcitation coefficient can be explained by a sharp increase in the total number of citations of the Journal in 2012, and on the other hand, by the insufficient use of the expanding base of scientific information by the authors.

A marked increase in the RSCI impact factor in 2012 was a significant positive

Table 4. Impact factor of the journal “Economic and social changes: facts, trends, forecast” in RSCI (as of July 15, 2014)

Indicator	Year					Growth rate in 2012 in comparison with 2011, %
	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012
2-year RSCI impact factor	-	0.184	0.248	0.231	0.732	317
2-year RSCI impact factor without self-citation	-	0.061	0.198	0.194	0.486	251
5-year RSCI impact factor	-	-	0.257	0.217	0.560	258
5-year RSCI impact factor without self-citation	-	-	0.228	0.210	0.436	208

Table 5. Dynamics of the integral indicator and positions of the journal “Economic and social changes: facts, trends, forecast” in Science Index rating on the subject “Economics. Economic Sciences” in 2010–2012 (as of July 15, 2014)

Indicator Year 2010 2011 2012 Value of the integral Science Index 698 1397 4983 Place in the Science Index rating on the subject “Economics. Economic Sciences” 111 111 65 Total number of journals in the rating on the subject “Economics. Economic Sciences” 221 247 269 achievement of the Journal. Note that the traditional method is the calculation of the two-year impact factor of the title [6; 13]. Here we present the value of the five-year impact factor (including self-citation and without self-citation) for a more objective assessment of the Journal’s impact factor of the journal (tab. 4).

The data presented in the table allow us to conclude that, in general, the Journal’s RSCI impact factor increased more than twice in 2012 compared with 2011.

There have been substantial improvements in the integral indicator of the Journal in the Science Index system, used to build the rating of Russian scientific journals in RSCI (tab. 5). The integral Science Index related to articles published over the last five years is calculated on the basis of the number of citations received during the year for which the indicator is calculated10.

The publication of the Journal and its indexation in RSCI started only in 2008, that is why it certainly lags behind the journals, the citation of which began earlier, i.e. their citation period covers the full five-year period.

Nevertheless, the Journal’s position in the Science Index rating on the subject “Economics. Economic Sciences” (first quartile) is quite significant. And this position can be evaluated more accurately when considering the results of citation in 2013 in general for the period, fully presented in RSCI.

The Journal’s registration with international citation databases Scopus and Web of Science should become an important step in its promotion. In this regard the Editorial Board is consistently implementing appropriate measures. The English version of the Journal has been published since 2009. The Journal is indexed in international information systems Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory, Index Copernicus, Google Scholar, and placed in the international databases EBSCOhost and ProQuest.

All issues of the Journal are submitted for evaluation to Web of Science. Targeted measures are being implemented for the preparation of the Journal to submit an application for its inclusion in Scopus. It is necessary to point out that, beginning from 2014, the Journal is published in a format that conforms to the requirements of international databases.

An important component of the Journal policy is to ensure open access to its full-text versions. As of June 1, 2014, the journal “Economic and social changes: facts, trends, forecast” meets the criteria of openness of the publication. Full-text electronic versions of articles and all other published materials are available free at the Journal’s official website on the Internet . By the end of 2014 it is planned to register the title with the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).

A regular monitoring of various aspects of activities related to the publication of the Journal allows us to implement its promotion consistently. Although the funds that could be involved in this process are limited, the entire range of marketing activities is implemented based on the needs and interests of target groups that make up the main readers of the title. This approach makes it possible to use available resources rationally and efficiently in order to meet marketing objectives.

The data in table 6 show that the main audience of the Journal is represented by five target groups, including researchers, university professors, graduate students and university students, representatives of authorities and administration, representatives of various spheres of socio-economic activities, and public activists.

The interests and needs of the first two target groups (researchers, university professors and graduate students), are similar in the sense that they are not only readers, but also authors of articles that can be published in the Journal. In this regard, marketing activities aimed at meeting the needs of these target groups include, first of all, address distribution of information materials about the Journal, guidelines for authors, mailing of free copies of issues to contributors, placement of fulltext electronic versions of articles and all other published materials with free access on the Journal’s official website and in Russian and foreign databases and also the presentation of the Journal in the framework of scientific seminars, conferences, exhibitions of scientific products.

In order to expand the audience, represented by authorities and administration and employees of various spheres of socio-economic activities, the following activities are implemented: the targeted free distribution of the Journal and digests to inform readers about new issues, regular publication of the results of the public opinion monitoring concerning the assessment of various aspects of public administration efficiency, as well as materials based on the results of expert opinions.

The Journal informs the public with the activity of academic institutions and research results in various fields of Social Sciences. For this purpose, ISEDT RAS new releases are

Table 6. Characteristics of the target audience of the journal “Economic and social changes: facts, trends, forecast”

№ п/п	Target audience of the Journal	Needs and interests of the target group	Marketing activities for promotion of the Journal
1.	Research Associates	Findings of relevant theoretical and applied research in various fields of Social Sciences (Economics and Management, Sociology, Social Demography and others). Publication of their research findings.	1.    Involvement as contributors to the Journal. 2.    Address distribution of information materials about the Journal and guidelines for authors. 3.    Mailing of free copies of issues to contributors. 4.    Presentation of the Journal in the framework of scientific seminars and conferences. 5.    Placement of full-text electronic versions of articles and all other published materials with free access on the official website of the Journal, in Russian and foreign databases.
2.	University professors, graduate students and university students	The use of materials of scientific publications for teaching. Publication of their research findings.	1.    Involvement as contributors to the Journal. 2.    Address distribution of information materials about the Journal and guidelines for authors. 3.    Mailing of free copies of issues to contributors. 4.    Presentation of the Journal in the framework of exhibitions of scientific titles by ISEDT RAS in higher education institutions. 5.    Placement of full-text electronic versions of articles and all other published materials with free access on the Journal’s official website and in Russian and foreign databases.
3.	Representatives of authorities and administration	The application of research results, presented in the scientific journal, for making management decisions, for the use in longterm regional programs, projects, development concepts.	1.    Publication of the results of expert opinions. 2.    Publication of the results of the public opinion monitoring concerning the assessment of various aspects of public administration efficiency. 3.    Free address distribution of the Journal.
4.	Employees of different spheres of socio-economic activity	The use of research findings in their practical activities.	1.    Address mailing of information digests on new issues. 2.    Publication of the results of the public opinion monitoring concerning the assessment of various aspects of public administration efficiency.
5.	Public	Learning about the activities of academic institutions and latest research findings through the scientific journal.	1.    Publication of popular science notes on the Journal’s materials. 2.    Announcement of new issues of the Journal on the website of the Institute and in the media. 3.    Free distribution of the Journal in the largest libraries. 4.    Placement of full-text electronic versions of articles and all other published materials with free access on the Journal’s official website and in Russian and foreign databases.

systematically announced on the website, and popular science notes on the Journal’s materials are published in the media. In addition, the Journal is distributed free of charge in the largest libraries of the country, and its full-text electronic versions are available on its official website, and in Russian and foreign databases.

Summing up, it should be noted that in the six years of issuing the Journal “Economic and social changes: facts, trends, forecast” a number of important tasks were implemented. It publishes the findings of fundamental and applied academic research in Economics; the Journal has become a platform for discussing various issues devoted to analysis and forecast of changes in the economy and social sphere in different countries and regions, and in local areas.

Today we can say that the Journal has acquired its contributors and readership, which is expanding every year. The demand for the Journal in Russian scientific community is confirmed indirectly by the data of the analysis of its scientometric indicators in the national citation index RSCI.

However, the Editorial Board of the Journal will have to solve many tasks of its development and promotion. First of all, it is necessary to implement consistent measures aimed at improving the quality of publications, attract new authors, including leading foreign scientists, expand the publication of joint research findings with colleagues from abroad. The most important task for the near future is to promote the Journal to a higher level by all the qualitative parameters. For this purpose it is necessary not just to enter global databases, but also to raise the quality of publications up to the world standards.

In conclusion, we note that the modern academic publications are in need of state support, without which it will be difficult to facilitate their entry in the leading citation systems. And without promoting economic journals even to a global average level, it is impossible to integrate into the international scientific space.

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