Central and Eastern European social science journals on an academic semiperiphery

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.