Some Assessments of the List of Journals in the Russian Science Citation Index

The database of the Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI), presented on the Web of Science (WoS) platform and operating since 2015, is designed to increase the citedness of Russian publications by the world scientific community, primarily by WoS users. RSCI includes the “core” of Russian journals on all trends of science, and the very presence of a journal in this base implies its high quality compared to other journals. The goal of this article is to reveal to what extent the provision of Russian scientific periodicals by RSCI is uniform and unbiased regarding bibliometric indicators and the distribution of journals over subject areas. Bibliometric analysis of two lists of journals, those of RSCI and the Russian Index of Science Citation (RISC), shows that only half of RSCI serials hold top positions in the Science Index (the quality indicator in RISC) rating. Note that more than 6% of RSCI journals are not included in the VAK (Higher Attestation Commission) list. Instead, about 300 journals from the Science Index list have much higher bibliometric indicators compared to RSCI journals. The analysis of the relative distribution of journals by subject areas of the State Rubricator of Scientific and Technical Information (SRSTI) shows a significant correlation in both lists for applied and agricultural sciences; the prevalence of natural, exact, and medical sciences in RSCI; and a significant underrepresentation of journals on social sciences and the humanities.