Evaluation Methods of Scientific Economic Journals Quality

Abstract

The paper presents a review regarding the current methods of evaluating, ranking, and rating academic economics journals in Russia and other states – the USA, the EU countries and China. In order to do this, the authors introduce a common typology of analytical methods which includes bibliometric, peer review, network (invariant), hybrid, and consolidated algorithms for evaluating the quality of journals. The article shows that the differentiation of periodicals can be performed using quantitative and qualitative approaches. The authors explore the usage of so-called institutional filters, which are the rules for regulating the academic sphere via specialized tools for assessing the academic economics journals. The findings reveal that the trend established in the beginning of the 21st century concerning the application of international databases’ formal metrics in science policy hides a lot of threats. Among them status losses by some Russian academic economics journals maintaining high academic standards, which are not covered by international databases, as well as various consequences of manipulating practices and setting of obviously unrealistic targets can be named. The authors outline the conditions for the efficient usage of formal academic economics journals metrics as institutional filters. The paper proves that current analytical methods for evaluating the periodicals quality allow to carry out their reasonable and unbiased ranking for research needs of Russian economists.