From the chief editor

Professor

Honored Scientist of the RF Director of ITSED RAS

Dear readers,

Current global trends increasingly support the fact that in the XXI century scientific potential of any country is the guarantor and the principal driving force of its development. In Russia it is the Russian Academy of Sciences that accumulates intellectual resources of the state along with universities. In the world scientific community RAS also maintains a “high reputation”, because “it remains the bearer of deep scientific culture and continues to conduct research on a broad science front”1.

It is difficult to overestimate the role of journals published by RAS since the publication is an essential element of the scientific information space. “According to the SCOPUS for 2009 the Russian Academy of Sciences takes the 3rd place in the world by the number of scientific publications among the 2080 top scientific research organizations <...> 45% of all scientific publications in the country and almost 50 _k of citations fell on the share of RAS”².

A little more than two years have passed from the time when the leaders of four economic institutes of RAS3, located in the northwest of Russia, decided to organize publication of a joint journal. The editorial board of this journal includes scholars of authority not only from Russia but also from Belarus, China and Finland.

One of the main tasks to be consistently solved by the editors at the first stage of its development is the meeting the criteria of the Higher Attestation Commission, that is necessary for its inclusion in the List of leading scientific journals, in which major scientific achievements of theses for a for the degree of Doctor and Candidate of Sciences should be published. The solution to this problem was associated with the formation of the peer review institute (peer review of all manuscripts was carried out with the second issue of the magazine, from June, 2008); with the strict publication periodicity (once per quarter); with the creation of a full-text Internet version of the journal (the journal site existed since the appearance of the journal); with the inclusion of the journal in the RSCI system4, with the obtaining of ISSN and a subscription index in Russia’s catalog of «Mail of Russia» (March, 2008); with the creation of the English version of the journal (the full-text English version of the journal appeared in 2009, the first four issues of the journal had in English only annotations, keywords, author information and bibliographies).

On 19 February, 2010 according to the decision of the Presidium of the Higher Attestation Commission our journal was included in the list of the leading peer-reviewed scientific editions. On the one hand, it is the recognition of the fact that the issue has reached a certain level, on the other this determines the prospects of the journal development, which primarily relate to the task to enter the number of journals, recognized in Russia and abroad as well. And although two years is a short period for anyone, especially for the academic edition, it is reasonable to preface the conversation about the prospects of the journal by summarizing some results of its development related to the history of the formation of the first institution of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the Vologda oblast – Institute of Territories’ Socio-Economic development of RAS.

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Historically, the scientific community of Russia has been heterogeneous: the traditional capitals of academic science were Moscow and St. Petersburg. Significant growth of scientific and technical capacity has been reached in the regions such as Siberia, the Urals, Tatarstan, which formed recognized scientific schools. But these schools were developed in large cities (Novosibirsk, Ekaterinburg, Kazan and others), which have concentrated the basic intellectual potential.

A special feature of ITSED RAS position is that in 1990 it appeared in the region, where there were no institutions of the Russian Academy of Sciences, conducting research on economics and sociology. In the absence of scientific competition there was the question about the quality of research and the establishment of academic environment contributing to the constant reproduction of academic research personnel of high qualification. Thanks to the support provided to our Institute at that time (and nowadays) by Department of RAS, the economic institutions of Academy, leading scientists of the Vologda universities, authorities of the city and the Vologda oblast, the Institute succeeded in creating a young (average age is 32 years) and ambitious team. Employees of ITSED seek to compensate lack of experience with the systematic approach in conducting research along the directions formed at the Institute through sustainable creative contacts with academicians V.L. Makaro , A.G. Granberg, G.V. Osipo , RAS corresponding member N.M. Rimashevskaia and other reputable scientists, representing leading scientific schools in the country.

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In establishing any scientific school the level of publications plays an important role, because this is an indicator of researchers’ skills. As of today criteria and methods for the assessment of this level are not clearly defined. The international system, linked to the citation index (especially in foreign, mostly American editions), is getting poorly acclimated in our country. RSCI, created as an alternative to the international system, does not include a complete database of scientific publications yet, and therefore it can not completely realize its functions. Taking this into consideration, the editorial board, always striving for feedback from their readers and authors, conducted a survey among members of the editorial board, scientists and staff of the Institute to evaluate the development of the journal and its prospects. The results of the survey on the first eight issues were sufficiently informative, that allows to draw some conclusions.

Despite the fact that our journal is young enough, it is the edition that meets modern requirements which are made to scientific editions: the magazine is included in the list of HAC, it has a full-text english version, readers have free access to the articles on the site of the journal. However,

we also have the prospects for the development in this direction. It is the inclusion in the SCOPUS database5 (journal is included in international databases such as Ulrich,s, ProQuest: Table 1. Demand for the versions of the journal (results of the poll) Version of the journal Total, 85 persons % Russian printed version FBI/Inform Global, Google Scholar). This 82 96.5 will allow to a wide range of foreign researchers Very called-for, called-for to apply to the English (electronic and printed) version of the edition. Currently, according to Poorly called-for 3 3.5 Not called-for Russian electronic version the survey, the Russian version is popular among Very called-for, called-for 79 95.2 95% of readers, though printed and electronic versions are gaining almost equal number of Poorly called-for 3 3,6 Not called-for 1 1.2 ■ points (96.5 and 95.2 respectively; tab. 1). English printed version Survey participants, among whom were Very called-for, called-for 29 34.9 both members of the Editorial Board (RAS Poorly called-for 34 41.0 academician V.V. Ivanter, academician of Not called-for 20 24.1 National Academy of Sciences of Belarus English electronic version 35 41.4 5 SCOPUS – the world’s largest single abstract Very called-for, called-for database, which indexes more than 17,000 titles of Poorly called-for 34 41.5 scientific, technical and medical journals of 4,000 in- Not called-for 14 17.1 ternational publishers.

P.G. Nikitenko, RAS corresponding member V.N. Lazhentse , professor M.A. Gusako , professor S.V. Kuznetso , professor F.D. Larichkin, professor A.I. Shishkin) and staff of ITSED RAS, praised the quality of articles: 87.1% of respondents identified it as a high and sufficiently high (tab. 2) .

Central, passing from issue to issue of the journal, columns – “Social development”, “External relations”, “Development strategy”, “Regional economy”, “Public economics” – also were highly appreciated by experts (8.5, 8.1, 8.0 and 7.9 respectively; tab. 3 ).

One of the important results of the survey was the fact that our colleagues have made proposals how to expand the subjects and introduce new sections in the journal. Thus, from their point of view, the following issues and topics in our edition will be actual: modernization; diversification and innovation development of economy; natural resource economics; raising of competitiveness of the regions; the use of economic and mathematical methods and

Table 2. Estimation of the publication level (results of the poll)

Response categories	Total
	85 persons	%
High, high enough	74	87.1
Average, below the average	11	12.9
Low

Table 3. Rating of journal sections (results of the poll)

Section	Average point	Rating
Social development	8.5	1
External relations	8.1	2
Development strategy	8.0	3/4
Regional economy	8.0	3/4
Social sector economy	7.9	5
Microeconomics	7.4	6
Scientific messages. Forum	7.1	7
Monitoring of public opinion	7.0	8
Problems of increased reproduction	6.7	9

models; problems of development of industries and regional specialization; the issues of strengthening regional finance and budgets; history of national economy.

From our point of view, results of the site analysis are interesting and require further study. According to the total number of articles views and its total duration (these parameters were selected as evaluation criteria), sections such as “Regional economy”, “Social development”, “Development strategy” took the top position of the rating, i.e. those that were identified by our respondents (tab. 4) .

The editorial board notes that site visitors are interested in the section «continues the topic of the previous issue». This suggests that the issues that are selected as leading for a discussion are really actual.

The issues № 7 (“Food security and agricultural sector of NWFD”), № 6 (“Development of small businesses”) and № 5 (“Tourism”) were the most popular among users of the site (tab. 5) . We think that the appeal to the possibilities of modern information technologies will be promising in analyzing the results of the journal: a formalized system of data processing of the site, compared with those ones of traditional (questionnaire) survey methods, helps to ensure more objective results.

Table 4. Rating of journal sections (results of the site analysis)

Sections	Total duration of articles view in a section (min.)	Total number of articles views in a section	Average time of article view in a section (min.)	Rating
Regional economy	45,239	2 428	19	1
Social development	14,512	679	21	2■
Development strategy	12,895	716	18	3
Continue the topic of the previous issue	9,596	508	19	4■
Environmental economics	2,718	134	20	5
Articles out the section	1,883	107	18	6
Public economics	1,783	103	17	7
Problems of increased reproduction	1,149	76	15	8
Views, opinions, comments	726	55	13	9■
Microeconomics	360	25	14	10
Monitoring of public opinion	281	17	17	11 ■
Scientific messages. Forum	222	18	12	12
Scientific life	121	10	12	13■
Information economy	89	5	18	14
External relations	41	4	10	15■
Actual information	34	2	17	16
Information for thought	2	1	2	17 ■

Table 5. Rating of journal issues (results of the site analysis)

Issue	Total duration of articles view in a section (min.)	Total number of articles views in an issue	Average time of article view in a section (min.)	Rating
Issue №7	17,751	859	21	1
Issue №6	16,224	883	18	2■
Issue №5	14,720	893	16	3
Issue №1	13,530	639	21	4■
Issue №4	8,416	462	18	5
Issue №2	7,316	407	18	6■
Issue №8	7,097	356	20	7
Issue №3	5,195	319	16	8 ■

Concluding the article, I am pleased to note that the results we have achieved over the past two years would have been impossible without the collaboration of the heads of economic institutes of the North-West and our colleagues from Belarus and China. This work built on trust and exactingness helps look ahead with optimism and solve tasks linked with increased scientific rating of our journal.