Capability of non-English-speaking countries for securing a foothold in international journal publishing

Abstract

• Most growth journals in eight countries were positioned at lower levels. • No significant differences in the average age of growth journals were identified between countries. • Journal rank percentage is a more useful indicator for measuring a journal's performance than JIF. • The findings of this study challenge the stereotype regarding the low position and competitiveness of JCR journals owned by non-English-speaking countries. This study examined the development of English-language journals indexed by the database of Journal Citation Reports (JCR) and owned by six non-English-speaking countries (China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Italy, and Spain) and four countries where English is an official national language (Australia, Canada, India, and Singapore) over a 21-year period. Four types of journals were identified based on changes in journal impact factor (JIF) and rank percentage per year. The results suggest that “growth” journals with trends of increasing JIF and rank percentage outnumbered other types of journals for each country and were not concentrated in particular subject categories. Over half of the growth journals in eight countries were positioned at Q3 and Q4 levels. No significant differences in the average age of growth journals were identified between countries. Although China possessed the highest percentage of growth journals, its journals with the highest growth were at the Q4 level. This study concluded that China and South Korea should monitor their development of JCR journals due to their faster improvement in the average annual rank percentage per growth journal. One limitation is that a considerable proportion of junior English journals were not analyzed in this study.