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Similar to its economy CEE science finds itself on a semiperiphery, with occasional breakthroughs towards the core of global science. We analyse CEE journals as one of the main carriers of academic reputation of this region. In contrast to leading Western social science journals that are predominantly published by major publishing houses (Larivière, Haustein and Mongeon, 2015), leading journals in post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe are mostly published by national academic institutions. This paper presents results of the quantitative and qualitative analysis of social science journals indexed in Scopus and based in one of the 13 European post-socialist countries (Croatia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Macedonia). The classification of these journals based on their disciplinary orientation and type of publisher is presented and compared with the classification of social science journals from these countries that are indexed in Urlichsweb. Semi-structured interviews with current or former editors-in-chief of social science journals indexed in Scopus are used in order to place them within a broader social and scientific context. We investigate how these journals attempt to achieve a more prominent role in the highly competitive world of scientific journals and why they fail or succeed. Social science journals’ missions, orientations and survival strategies are categorised and compared. Also these journals forge different transnational networks within but also outside the European research area.

In this paper we were trying to analyze how Scopus subject categories of journals can influence processing and use of bibliographic data in bibliometric or scientometric research. The sample for this research was obtained from Scopus database as a result of the search strategies of scientific productivity and citations of social scientists from 15 European post-socialist countries (Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia) for the period 1996-2013. The sample consisted of bibliographic records of 83, 059 papers published in 4, 896 journals. Each of 4, 896 journals, classified to social sciences according to Scopus' subject categories, was analysed and reclassified according to OECD- based Croatian classification of social sciences, by a subject specialists. The results of reclassification process were huge decreased, in number of journals, from initial 4, 896 it fell to 2, 744 titles, as well as number of papers (N=35653 papers), to only 42.9% of the initial number. In addition to a significantly smaller number of papers and journals, there are significant differences in the citations count. The obtained results confirm Wang & Waltman (2016) thesis that the accuracy of a classification system can seriously influence bibliometric studies.

Modern universities have recognized learning outcomes as a starting point in the enhancement of the curriculum quality and the need to orientate outcomes towards social relevance and employability. The concepts ‘learning outcomes’ and ‘competences’ are sometimes used as substitute terms, but learning outcomes refer to learning achievements from the perspective of study programs, while competences refer to the capacities acquired through the learning process from the perspective of the student. In contrast to professional competences which are easy to define, primarily due to their connection to the scientific field and related profession, the generic and transferable competences are hard to define due to their unspecificity (in the domain sense) and multifunctionality which creates issues for the measurability of generic competencies. Generic qualifications often have descriptors that define the learning outcomes associated with them and these are normally generic in nature and can be applied across subject disciplines and modes of learning. In higher education they are primarily used by course designers (developing learning outcomes and assessment criteria) ; those involved in quality assurance (validating, reviewing and approving programs of learning) ; and by credential evaluators (nationally and internationally, as reference points to help make accurate recognition judgments) (A Framework for Qualifications of the European Higher Education Area, 2005). The term ‘generic’ conveys the inherent nature of the competence. They are not specific to either the education sector or to a particular discipline. The alternative term ‘transferable’ is more a characteristic of generic competences and therefore the term generic information competences will be used later in the text. Some of the work in developing of taxonomy of competences has been done in European projects: the European Dictionary of Skills and Competences (DISCO, 2012) and the European Skills/Competences, qualifications and Occupations (ESCO) which presents a base for the generic and subject specific competences at the European level. However, until we develop a clear set of assessment criteria the generic competences will not be given the required attention during both curriculum development and the teaching process. Therefore, building a detailed ontology of both competences and learning outcomes could serve as a viable solution to the need for explicit assessment of generic skills. A discipline-embedded approach to developing generic skills is favored, with explicit assessment and reporting of the outcomes.

The fact that interactive web services have entered all spheres of life motivated the authors to investigate how this new collaborative media influences modern information society. The paper discusses the results obtained by comparative analysis of different collaborative media. Interactivity was considered as one of the most important criteria for choosing between the many different inter¬ active web services. The authors analyzed the main characteristics of the cho¬ sen services, classified them into groups and compared them within those groups. The paper stresses the importance of today’ s most popular services, varying from search engines, all kinds of online communities, different types of leisure services to e-learning services, on the behavior and expectations of all participants in the global Internet-based communication. Search engines were analyzed according to ranking and credibility while Web community services were analyzed according to many of their interactive and communication pos¬ sibilities. The category of leisure services ranged from those services created for leisure time to those created for other purposes but used as leisure ser¬ vices. Also, the interactive services of the largest Croatian e-learning solution, implemented at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Univer¬ sity of Zagreb, were analyzed. The positive and negative sides of each of the analyzed groups of interactive web services were compared and synthesized, and their effects on media de¬ velopment and the society in general were analyzed. In the paper, the authors tried to emphasize the great social aspect of the Internet today and the services it provides. They showed how society has a great influence on the growth of the Internet, but also how the Internet has an even greater effect on the rela¬ tionships and activities within society. Thus, this paper does not only give an overview of the comparative analysis of interactive web services but also shows the mutual influence of the collaborative media and human creativity on the development of the information society.