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Nowadays many countries and institutions use bibliometric assessment of journal quality in their research evaluation policies. However, bibliometric measures, such as impact factor or quartile, may provide a biased quality assessment for relatively new, regional, or non-mainstream journals, as these outlets usually do not possess a longstanding history, and may not be included into indexing databases. To reduce the information asymmetry between academic community (researchers, editors, policymakers) and journal management, we propose an alternative approach to evaluate journals quality signals using previous publication track record of authors. We explore the difference in the quality signals sent by regional journals. Traditional, journal-level, bibliometric measures are contrasted with generalised measures of authors' publishing records. We used a set of 50,477 articles and reviews in 83 regional journals in Physics and Astronomy (2014–2019) to extract and process data on 73 866 authors and their additional 329,245 publications in other Scopus-indexed journals. We found that traditional journal-level measures (such as journal quartile, CiteScore percentile, Scimago Journal Rank) tend to under-evaluate journal quality, thus contributing to an image of low-quality research venues. Author-level measures (including the share of papers in the Nature Index journals) send positive signals of journal quality and allow us to subdivide regional journals by their publishing strategies. These results suggest that research evaluation policies might consider attributing greater weight to regional journals, not only for the training purposes of doctoral students but also for gaining international visibility and impact.

ObjectivesTo examine whether regional biomedical journals in Africa had policies on plagiarism and procedures to detect it; and to measure the extent of plagiarism in their original research articles and reviews.DesignCross sectional survey.Setting and participantsWe selected journals with an editor-in-chief in Africa, a publisher based in a low or middle income country and with author guidelines in English, and systematically searched the African Journals Online database. From each of the 100 journals identified, we randomly selected five original research articles or reviews published in 2016.OutcomesFor included journals, we examined the presence of plagiarism policies and whether they referred to text matching software. We submitted articles to Turnitin and measured the extent of plagiarism (copying of someone else’s work) or redundancy (copying of one’s own work) against a set of criteria we had developed and piloted.ResultsOf the 100 journals, 26 had a policy on plagiarism and 16 referred to text matching software. Of 495 articles, 313 (63%; 95% CI 58 to 68) had evidence of plagiarism: 17% (83) had at least four linked copied or more than six individual copied sentences; 19% (96) had three to six copied sentences; and the remainder had one or two copied sentences. Plagiarism was more common in the introduction and discussion, and uncommon in the results.ConclusionPlagiarism is common in biomedical research articles and reviews published in Africa. While wholesale plagiarism was uncommon, moderate text plagiarism was extensive. This could rapidly be eliminated if journal editors implemented screening strategies, including text matching software.

In this essay I discuss how my editorship of Sociological Focus, the official journal of the North Central Sociological Association, simultaneously places me at the margins, in relation to top-tier journals, and in the thick of things, in relation to the authors and reviewers who participate in the journal. All editors face issues related to the review process and, occasionally at least, struggle with decisions. Given the hierarchical nature of the discipline, however, editors of journals at the lower end of the rankings face additional dilemmas related to fairness and access. Concluding that the margin is a bustling place where lots of sociology gets done, I end with a strong plea that we protect our regional journals and keep them vibrant and inclusive. The easiest way to do that is for all of us to publish in them.

The Web of Science citation indexes were originally intended to serve as research aids, to provide easy-to-use bibliographic aids for authors, help authors identify colleagues who have cited their work, and assist librarians in making selections among journals. But they were soon carried by the tidal waves of scientism and data-ism, first in business management and governance, and then also in scholarly research, to near-monopolistic control of the business of journals evaluation in the United States (though increasingly challenged in some areas by the more recent but similar Scopus citation indexes). With that dominance, earlier tentative generalizations based on limited research gradually became more and more rigidified “laws” that have been strictly enforced: that quality can be scientifically measured by the number of articles that cite the article or a particular journal, and, by extension, that the importance and contribution of a scholar’s article, like that of a journal, can be determined by its “impact factor” measured by counting the number of articles citing it. Those “laws” came to be applied first to the natural sciences, extended to the social sciences, and finally also to major spheres of the arts and humanities. Today, they have come to dominate the entire continuum of disciplines and fields ranging from the most universalist of the natural sciences, in which truths may be established by reproducible experiments, to the more particularist social sciences, and still more particularist arts and humanities, in which theories, even facts, are far more contested and tentative. As we move across the spectrum from the more universalist end of natural sciences toward the more particularist end of the social sciences and arts and humanities, such methods have tended to violate ever more the fundamental nature and realities of scholarly research. However, once entrenched, the citation indexes business has shown the same tendencies as any monopolistic entity toward resisting change and transparency. Where those tendencies have been adopted by a centralized government for bureaucratized control, as in China, the misuses and abuses of citation indexes have been further magnified. This article ends by calling for developing more substantive, genuinely peer-review-based methods of evaluation; for relying more on alternative nonprofit bibliographic and data services; and for greater inclusivity, especially with regard to scholarship in languages other than English.

This article is an analysis of differences and similarities between four Englishlanguage journals on rural sociology. The comparison covered topics discussed in about 600 articles published in the journals in the years 1995-2010 and the regional affiliation of their authors. In the comparison, all articles and texts on empirical research published in this period in Eastern European Countryside were considered. In total, 141 texts were published in this annual journal. Out of the three other journals (Rural Sociology, Sociologia Ruralis, Journal of Rural Studies) 50 articles for each of three periods: 1995-1996, 2002-2003, 2008-2009, were selected. Results of the comparison show that the journals have strictly regional profiles, and that present rural sociology does not seem to be the science on social phenomena in world-wide rural areas. Rural sociology used in the four studied journals does not develop the knowledge that would be useful in solving problems of the rural population. In the three journals under study (Rural Sociology, Sociologia Ruralis, Journal of Rural Studies) almost exclusively sociology of rural areas in Western Europe and Northern America was developed, and their contributors were almost always authors from the two regions. The fourth journal - Eastern European Countryside - was concerned, adequately to its title, with rural phenomena in Central and Eastern Europe

Citations are increasingly used to indicate the quality of an academic unit's work. The set of literature or journals, however, becomes crucial to any ranking scheme. Citations from the broadly based Social Science Citations Index suggest a different ranking of departments than the ranking obtained from a somewhat narrowly focused set of North American journals of agricultural economics. The paper seeks to determine the influence of regional journals, joint authorship, and self-citations on departmental rankings. Data bases of citations are developed for the faculty of seventy-three departments of agricultural economics in the United States and Canada.

The two most important citation indexes used by the global science community contain marked regional disparities in their representation of academic journals. Existing work on the geographical coverage of Web of Science and Scopus citation indexes compared their coverage of journals in a small sample of ‘top’ countries. This paper offers the first regional analysis of journal representation in these two indexes across all eight UNESCO world regions, compared to the total number of active Ulrich’s directory academic journals in these regions. Journal lists from 239 countries/territories were collected from Ulrich’s periodical directory and analyzed by region. This enables a comparison of the regional distribution of journals within Web of Science (20,255 matched journals) and Scopus (23,348 matched journals) with those in Ulrich’s directory (83,429 journals). Journals published in Europe, Oceania and North America were more likely to be indexed in Scopus and Web of Science compared to other world regions. Journals published in sub-Saharan Africa were the most underrepresented and were four times less likely to be indexed than those published in Europe. The analysis also offers a quantitative breakdown of journal publication languages, highlighting how Scopus and Web of Science disproportionately index English language publications in all world regions. Finally, the analysis shows how field coverage by Web of Science and Scopus differs between the regions, with the Social Sciences and Humanities still under-represented, in comparison to Natural Sciences and Medical & Health Science.

This article offers the first disaggregated, quantitative comparison of Islamist and nationalist violence, using new data from Russia's North Caucasus. We find that violence by Islamist groups is less sensitive to government coercion than violence by nationalist groups. Selective counterinsurgency tactics outperform indiscriminate force in suppressing attacks by nationalists, but not Islamists. We attribute this finding to rebels’ support structure. Because Islamist insurgents rely less on local support than nationalists, they are able to maintain operations even where it is relatively costly for the local population to support them. These findings have potentially significant implications for other contemporary conflicts in which governments face both types of challenges to their authority and existing political order.

The 2024 editorial update of The Annals of Regional Science reaffirms the journal’s dedication to transparency and scholarly excellence in the field of regional science. Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, the journal has demonstrated resilience and continued to serve as a pivotal platform for scholarly discourse. This update highlights the journal’s recent milestones, including changes to the editorial board with new members bringing fresh perspectives to drive the journal’s mission forward. The editorial discusses the journal’s performance, encompassing its impact factor and the diverse range of topics covered, emphasizing its role in advancing research aligned with Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG 8. The ARSC continues to evolve, embracing changes that reflect current trends and maintaining its influence in the academic community.

The editors-in-chief of the Annals of Regional Science offer an overview and analysis of recent developments at the journal from January 2020 through December 2021, a time period hampered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Annal’s Impact Factor increased substantially to 2.646 in 2020. Moreover, submissions increased from pre-COVID times. A new development is the shifting of source regions for articles accepted for publication. For the first time, China tied with the USA to lead the distribution of acceptances by country. Special Issues continue to be important components of the journal.