Modeling the dynamics of the retentivity process of journals among the most authoritative scientific serials

The article examines the process of journal retention over time as the most authoritative sources of scientific papers. Formal concepts of retentivity are introduced, retentivity orders and retentivity directions. The postulates, which are formulated in the article, link the probability of retention to the time interval between the two compared journal lists, to the ratio of the sizes of these lists, as well as to some qualitative characteristics of the journals. A mathematical model of the retentivity process is built on the basis of these postulates. The model is compared with data from the Journal Citation Reports—Science Edition for a 16-year period. The results of this comparison show a high degree of conformity of the model to the real process of retentivity, and reveal important features of this process.