Abstract:
Currently, Russian institutions are almost completely disconnected from Western information resources and services related to the publication of scientific journals. In such conditions, the task of replacing the departed services, reorientation to domestic scientific journals, Russian online library resources has become particularly actual. In the largest bibliographic database the eLibrary.ru, focused on Russian-language scientific publications, collected information about almost 15 thousand Russian-language journals. In the eLibrary.ru there is an analytical system "Russian Science Citation Index" that processes metadata of articles from more than 5 thousand Russian scientific journals. Is the eLibrary.ru ready to serve as a national bibliographic database? For what reason "white lists" of journals appear in Russian organizations?
The main problem of the RSCI is the quality of the constructed ratings of scientific journals. The methods of calculating ratings over the past years have caused certain criticisms. The paper provides an example of a rating of journals from the section "Mathematics" built in the RSCI. Journals that are little known among professional mathematicians were in the first positions. Serious deformations in the ratings of the eLibrary.ru undermine the confidence of scientists in the assessments of the credibility of Russian journals proposed by the eLibrary.ru. The reaction of some universities and scientific organizations is quite expected: organizations are beginning to introduce their own criteria for the success of the publication activities of employees associated with the publication of articles in journals from the so-called "white lists". The white list of journals is compiled, as a rule, by the expert councils of the organization specifically for each discipline and scientific direction. Scientometric indicators may be taken into account when compiling white lists, but they are not the primary criterion for the selection of journals. White lists can now become a reasonable addition to the ratings of bibliographic databases.