1. "Журнальный бенчмаркинг: как улучшить позиционирование журналов в международных наукометрических базах данных" В.М. Московкин директор Центра наукометрических исследовании и развития университетской конкурентоспособности, Белгородский государственный национальный исследовательский университет (Россия) 3-я Mеждународная научно-практическая конференция «Научное издание международного уровня – 2014: повышение качества и расширение присутствия в мировых информационных ресурсах» 19-21 мая 2014, Москва, Финансовый университет при Правительстве РФ, издательство «Elsevier», Нидерланды

2. Journal benchmarking is understood as an analytic procedure of continuous monitoring and comparing of advance of a definite journal(s) against the one of a competitive journal(s) in the same subject area together with applying the best practices defined in order to improve own advance and gain a position among leading scientific journals.

3. As a realization of Journal Benchmarking analytic procedure is suggested to build up a journal scoreboard, which is a matrix of journal indicators (I ij ) with dimension (size) of m × n, where I ij is a j journal indicator for an i journal, 1 ≤i ≤m, 1 ≤ j ≤n, where m is the quantity of journals, n is the quantity of indicators. SCOPUS journals and indicators are chosen from SCIMAGO platform. As an alternative, the Journal Citation Reports system of indicators can be used, and the integral indicators SJR and IF can be taken as target indicators of leading journals. Besides, short, middle or long term goals to achieve SJR or IF values of top journal positions. Methodology

4. Various practices of journal management (e.g. international co-authorship support, invited papers from highly cited authors, setting an advanced, cutting-edge themes and subject matters, increasing requirements to minimum amount of sources for reference list section, etc.) can be used as guidelines to reach to the target indicators. Applying these measures appropriately, the journal’s team can manipulate different journal indicators, including but not limited to the ones of integral type (SJR, IF).

5. For prediction calculations for the concrete journal scoreboard presented in the article, the measures for international co-authorship support and reference list expanding will be considered. These measures correspond to control indicators International Collaboration (%) and Reference per Document provided by SCIMAGO platform.

6. Table 1. Journal Scoreboard for the Laser and Optics subject, September, 2013 Journals (country)SJRН-indexRef/Doc International Collaboration, % Cites/Doc. (2 years) ProgressinOptics(Netherlands) 3.53531109.67505.8 LaserPhysicsLetters(Germany) 2.1724426.4233.337.61 Laser and Photonics Reviews (Germany) 4.45334109.4742.868.01 OpticExpress (USA) 2.2614324.828.763.85 OpticsLetters (USA) 2.29417014.8530.243.57 LaserPhysics (Russia) 0.7523429.916.382.54 AppliedOptics (USA) 0.96611823.2616.751.79 Laser and Particle Beams (UK) 0.8553733.7826.922.06 ChineseOpticsLetters (China) 0.4471915.576.90.97 Journal of Russian Laser Research (USA) 0.351823.5521.880.69 Applied Physics B: Laser and Optics (Germany) 1.0728326.3124.681.79 IET Optoelectronics (UK) 0.6312821.2921.431.16 Ukrainian Journal of Physical Optics (Ukraine) 0.334515.05100.57 OpticalEngineering (USA) 0.4376623.2811.810.91 Journal of Laser Applications (USA) 0.2262827.6517.50.52 Infrared and Laser Engineering (China) 0.2891511.390.490.81 OpticalRaview (Germany) 0.4012619.3313.160.62

7. Journal of the Optical Society of America B: Optical Physics(USA) 1.3249831.7623.882.35 NaturePhotonics(UK) 11.89710022.5925.6317.03 Advances in Optics and Photonics(USA) 11.32619159.3812.513.47 IEEE PhotonicsJournal(USA) 1.1851123.6732.952.25 Journal of Biomedical Optics(USA) 1.024779.096.462.51 JournalofOptics(UK) 1.0084730.420.081.88 Photonics and Nanostructures - Fundamentals and Applications(Netherlands) 0.8382226.4926.441.88 Journal of Modern Optics(UK) 0.6575929.7513.891.19 Journal of the Optical Society of Korea (South Korea) 0.6481017.938.451,1 Infrared Physics and Technology(Netherlands) 0.5623223.9916.471.64 Journal of the European Optical Society(UK) 0.408923.6717.650.71 Opto-electronicsReview(UK) 0.3542427.5317.020.92 Journal of Photonics for Energy(USA) 0.332427.25250.78 OptoelectronicsLetters(Germany) 0.273816.313.310.98 OpticaApplicata (Poland) 0.2651620.6613.250.66 ChineseOptics (China) 0.239317.632.270.51 Journal of Optical Technology (A Translation of OpticheskiiZhurnal)(USA) 0.2211413.922.890.2 International Journal of Optics(USA) 0.169330.7426.830.37 Optica Pura y Aplicada (Spain) 0.162415.0225.40.18

8. Table 2. Cross-correlation matrix for journals included in Journal Scoreboard for the Laser and Optics subject, September, 2013. SJRH-index Ref. / Doc. International Collaboration, % Cites / Doc. (2 years) SJR 1.000.260.630.260.97 H-index 1.00-0.080.250.30 Ref. / Doc. 1.000.410.59 International Collaboration, % 1.000.36 Cites / Doc. (2years) 1.00

9. Based on calculations performed for the scoreboard on the subject of lasers and optics, we derived the following (compare Table 1): Сites/Doc.(2 years) = 0,119(Int.Coll.)+0,324, R 2 = 0,13, (1) Сites/Doc.(2 years) = 0,071(Ref./Doc.)+0,404, R 2 = 0,35. (2) Graphs of these equations of linear regression are presented in Figures 1 and 2 The points (33.33, 7.61) and (42.86, 8.01) were excluded in the first case, and (22.59, 17.03) – in the second case, so we have the following equations of linear regression: Cites/Doc.(2 years) = 0.117(Int.Coll.)–0.390, R 2 = 0.48,(3) Cites/Doc.(2 years) = 0.060(Ref./Doc.)+0.198, R 2 = 0.47.(4) Graphs of these equations of linear regression are presented in Figures 3 and 4 Equations of linear regression

10. Figure 1. Linear regression of equation (1)

11. Figure 2. Linear regression of equation (2)

12. Figure 3. Linear regression of equation (3)

13. Figure 4. Linear regression of equation (4)

14. For the benchmark data (Table 1) the following linear and nonlinear equations of multivariate (or multiple) regression was obtained: Cites/Doc.(2 years) = 0.047(Ref./Doc.)+0.063(Int.Coll.)– 0.286, R 2 =0.37, (5) Cites/Doc.(2 years) = 0.079(Ref./Doc.) 0,192 (Int.Coll.) 0,857, R 2 = 0.33. (6) If the points (22.59, 25.63, 17.03) and (159.38, 12.50, 13.47) are excluded, in the first case, the correlations improve: Cites/Doc.(2 years) = 0.071(Ref./Doc.)+0.034 (Int.Coll.)– 0.435, R 2 =0.55,(7) in the second case, they suffer almost no change. Continuing the work with equation (7), we make a calculation conjugate to previously made calculations for equations (3) and (4), for Laser Physics. In this case equation (7) with Ref./Doc.=50 and Int.Coll.=30%, the result for Cites/Doc.=4.14.

15. Trend Diagrams Trend diagrams over different years within three-year time period can be built up on the basis of such scoreboards. For example, we can make an IF- ∆IF diagram with breakdown of positive quadrant in ∆IF=0, IF=IFav axes for 4 sectors: 1. Top journals, IF > IF av, ∆IF > 0; 2. Journals losing competitiveness, IF > IF av, ∆IF 0; 4. Outsiders, IF < IF av, ∆IF < 0. Here current value of IF corresponds to Cites/Doc (2 years) indicator in Table 3, ∆IF is an average annual IF value for three years period (2010-2012), IF av is an average IF value for the journals selection in general.

16. 7 strategies for increasing national journals IF values. 1. Inviting to cooperation highly cited authors, developing breakthrough problems which are relevant to research areas mentioned above, gives a guarantee of journal IF growth. But the problem is that highly cited authors choose only high impact journals. It’s possible to attract them only in rare cases due to close relationship with editorial board members or high salaries. 2. Search for young talented researchers who are able to compete in breakthrough research with mature researchers but who have not yet maintained a reputation to be published in high rating journals. That’s why they have to be published in low impact journals. 3. Improving national journals positioning in the world ranking systems by means of international co-authorship activation (Table 3). Editorial board can give a priority to international co-authorship articles. We mean publication order after reviewing (urgency of publication). It’s clear that after publication the probability of article’s citation will sharply increase due to article’s quality improvement especially if to compare this article with the one written without foreign co-author and good knowledge of foreign author’s publications. One more advantage is that foreign co- author will cite this article in other rating journals, and this will improve national journal IF value where the article was published.

17. 4. Improving national journals positioning in the world ranking systems by means of OA involvement. It can be achieved by applying certain policies on self-archiving and copyright within the frameworks of the SHERPA/Romeo project (http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/), reducing embargo, introducing OA options or turning journals into Open Access journals, refusing to issue printed journal.http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/ 5. Forming consolidated community of authors choosing for publication one and the same journal specially treated by them can improve its IF value. To achieve that authors should cite articles in this very journal regularly, including their own ones and articles published in this and also in other high rating journals. For national translated journals with IF it means that articles published in English version of these journals should be cited. Such a way of citing must be reasonable and not to be dictated by editors or it can lead to “author’s citation cartels”. 6. Supporting of national scientists consolidation in citing national journals with IF and with unified national and English titles versions of the same journals. 7. Setting up journal consortiums which will help to closer mutual citing of authors, published in journals of this consortium.

18. Two formal conditions to improve IF Two formal conditions are suggested to improve IF which comes from the formula of its calculation: IF (2013) = C/N, where C is the number of times that articles published in the journal in 2011 and 2012, were cited by articles in indexed journals during 2013, and N is the total number of “citable items” published by that journal in 2011 and 2012. “Citable items” are usually articles, reviews, proceedings, or notes; not editorials or letters to the editor. 1. Vast Reference list with maximum of references to articles of the journal (maximizing formula numerator). 2. Lesser volume of journal with minimum amount of issues and articles in the journal annually (minimizing formula denominator). The second condition is of a special interest because it allows to reduce the self-cost of a journal and to improve its quality (to collect a few articles of good quality is much easier than many ones). This strategy is used by the majority of emerging online journals, e.g. Cybermetrics (Spain), Webology (Iran), etc.

19. 6 levels for journal benchmarking 1. Author (for planning author’s publication strategies); 2. Big publishing houses; 3. Journal and University Associations; 4. Single journals; 5. Single universities, academic and other institutions publishing journals; 6. Governmental.