To what extent is publishing in the Web of Science an indicator of journal 'quality'?

The assessment of research based on the journal in which it is published is a widely adopted practice. Some research assessments use the Web of Science (WoS) to identify “high quality” journals, which are assumed to publish excellent research. The authority of WoS on journal quality stems from its selection of journals based on editorial standards and scientific impact criteria. These can be considered as universalistic criteria, meaning that they can be applied to any journal regardless of its place of publication, language, or discipline. In this article we examine the coverage by WoS of journals produced in Latin America, Spain, and Portugal. We use a logistic regression to examine the probability of a journal to be covered by WoS given universalistic criteria (editorial standards and scientific impact of the journal) and particularistic criteria (country, language, and discipline of the journal). We find that it is not possible to predict the inclusion of journals in WoS only through the universalistic criteria because particularistic variables such as country of the journal, its discipline and language are strongly related to inc¬lusion in WoS. We conclude that using WoS as a universalistic tool for research assessment can disadvantage science published in journals with adequate editorial standards and scientific merit. We discuss the implications of these findings within the research evaluation literature, specifically for countries and disciplines not extensively covered by WoS

SciELO

En la V Reunión Coordinación Operacional de la Red SciELO, realizada el 15 de junio próximo pasado, la Lic. Fabiana Montanari (Colegiado SciELO) en su exposición sobre Criterios SciELO de indexación: evaluación de revistas para el ingreso y permanencias en la colecciones, se refiere específicamente al Registro de ensayos clínicos y de ensayos controlados aleatorios

Why researchers publish in non-mainstream journals: training, knowledge bridging, and gap filling

In many countries research evaluations confer high importance to mainstream journals, which are considered to publish excellent research. Accordingly, research evaluation policies discourage publications in other nonmainstream journals under the assumption that they publish low quality research. This approach has prompted a policy debate in low and middle-income countries, which face financial and linguistic barriers to access mainstream journals. A common criticism of the current evaluation practices is that they can hinder the development of certain topics that are not published in mainstream journals although some of them might be of high local relevance. In this article, we examine this issue by exploring the functions of non-mainstream journals in scientific communication. We interviewed researchers from agricultural sciences, business and management, and chemistry in Colombia on their reasons to publish in non-mainstream journals. We found that non-mainstream journals serve the following functions: 1) offer a space for initiation into publishing (training); 2) provide a link between articles in mainstream journals and articles read by communities with limited access to them (knowledge- bridging); 3) publish topics that are not well covered by mainstream journals (knowledge gap-filling). Therefore, publication in non-mainstream journals cannot be attributed only to ‘low scientific quality’ research. They also fulfil specific communication functions. These results suggest that research evaluation policy in low and middle-income countries should consider assigning greater value to non-mainstream journals given their role in bridging and disseminating potentially useful and novel knowledge