International Landscape of the Market of Russian Economic Journals

The paper considers a new stage in the formation of the Russian market of economic journals, the stage at which an increasing number of them are accepted for coverage in international databases such as Scopus and Web of Science. In order to make an adequate assessment of the qualitative changes that have occurred in the market, we propose to introduce significant adjustments to the methodology for compiling the academic Rating of leading Russian economic journals. The adjustments affect both the subsystem of scientometric indicators where it takes into account the potential of high citations, and the subsystem of expert evaluation where it takes into account the publication’s inclusion in the databases Scopus and Web of Science (WoS). We provide the results of the 4th wave of the Rating of leading Russian economic journals presented in the form of the Diamond List and the List of the second tier of journals. We analyze the shifts in the positions of the journals in comparison with previous years; we show that Russia already has 15 economic publications with international certification, among which five publications have double certification (both Scopus and WoS). The figures show that a new qualitative round of competition has begun among the journals that have received international recognition. We prove that a journal’s success or failure in its efforts to be included in international databases depends on whether its management is willing to follow the new rules and standards. This is largely the reason why many domestic journals have lost their positions. The following are considered as typical strategies a journal should use to achieve success: to implement a sequence of efforts to be accepted for coverage in international databases; to “hunt” for best authors; to provide a flexible peer review system; to publish a full-scale English version of the journal. We substantiate a new publishing paradigm, according to which Russian economists in the coming years will reconsider their views in favor of placing their papers in first-rate domestic publications rather than publishing them in second-rate foreign journals