In the context of international sanctions and Russia’s commitment to strengthening its scientific and technological sovereignty, national lists of scientific journals are becoming a key tool for developing an independent system for evaluating scientific activity. This article provides a comparative analysis of methodological approaches to compiling such lists in Russia and abroad to identify best practices that contribute to improving the quality of Russian scientific periodicals. An original multifaceted classification has been developed and applied, considering the level of integration of international databases into national lists, subject coverage, ranking methodology, the regulator responsible for compiling the lists, and journal selection criteria. Our study compares current Russian lists, such as the Higher Attestation Commission List, the Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI), the Russian Index of Science Citation Core (RISC Core, which includes journals indexed in RSCI, Scopus, and the Web of Science Core Collection), and the Unified State List of Scientific Publications (the «White List»), as well as national lists from foreign countries: Australia, Brazil, India, Italy, Kazakhstan, and Norway. Alternative approaches to creating regulatory and expert systems for assessing scientific performance are considered. The analysis systematizes the strengths and weaknesses of current Russian lists and identifies key systemic problems inherent in existing approaches to their development. The findings of this study can be used by government agencies to develop a more balanced and flexible model of state science policy aimed at improving the quality of domestic scientific journals and building a national system for assessing scientific performance. The implementation of such measures will contribute to strengthening scientific sovereignty and developing scholarly communication on a national scale.

This paper presents the results of a thematic analysis of Russian academic journals that are founded by Federal, National Research, and supporting universities and indexed in the list of the Higher Attestation Commission (HAC). This official list comprises peer-reviewed journals approved for publishing the core findings of dissertations for the Candidate of Sciences and Doctor of Sciences degrees. Using the State Rubricator of Scientific and Technical Information (GRNTI), we classified the journals by subject area. We compared the thematic profiles of journals across the three types of founding universities and against the overall thematic distribution of all Russian HAC-indexed journals. Furthermore, to identify the research fields where Russian university journals have the strongest international presence, we analyzed their thematic distribution in Scopus using the All Science Journal Classification (ASJC). Data from the Using Russian Index of Science Citation (RISC) reveal a general predominance of university journals in the Social Sciences and Humanities at the national level, a trend reflected in their strong coverage in Scopus. In the Natural and Exact Sciences, only journals from specific sub-disciplines are well-represented in both RISC and Scopus. Journals in the Life Sciences show low visibility, while Russian university journals in Medicine and Health Sciences are almost absent from Scopus, as publications in these fields in Russia are dominated by research centers and commercial publishers. A detailed analysis at the level of individual journals and university publishing centers can provide valuable insights for journal founders and editorsin-chief considering adjustments to a journal's thematic scope or the launch of new titles.

Author keywords, unlike terms assigned by professional indexers, are not regulated by normative documents or controlled by special dictionaries. The aim of this study is to identify statistical differences between two sets of keywords (KWs): those assigned by authors, on the one hand, and those assigned by editors of abstract database of VINITI RAS, on the other. It is believed that confirming and understanding these differences may be useful for more rational use of keywords obtained from various sources. A comparative analysis of quantitative indicators of the novelty and lexical diversity of author and editorial KWs was conducted for the first time in this study. A comparison of the inclusion measures of author and editorial KWs in other metadata elements was conducted for the first time on several independent thematic samples. The methodological basis of the study is generalization—the identification and quantitative analysis of common features inherent in the studied data arrays. The empirical base of the study consisted of five independent statistical samples, the size of which varied from 10.40 thousand to 18.97 thousand articles. The topics of the samples corresponded to five headings of the State Rubricator of Scientific and Technical Information: 52. Mining; 53. Metallurgy; 55. Mechanical Engineering; 61. Chemical Technology. Chemical Industry; 73. Transport. We selected Russian-language articles uploaded to the VINITI abstract database in 2021–2024 and simultaneously containing the following non-empty metadata elements: title, author’s keywords, author’s abstract, editor’s keywords, and an abstract specially prepared for the VINITI abstract database. For each sample and separately for author’s and editor’s KWs, point statistical estimates of the identified common features were obtained: lexical diversity, novelty, and inclusion of keywords in other metadata elements (title and abstract). Similar statistical differences of author’s and editor’s KWs were observed across all five thematic collections: the degree of lexical diversity in author-generated KWs is higher than that of editor-generated terms; the novelty coefficient of author-generated KWs is higher than that of editor-generated terms; the novelty coefficient of author-generated annotations is higher than that of abstracts; and the degree of inclusion of author-generated KWs in article titles is lower than the degree of inclusion of editor-generated terms. Replication of the identified differences across five independent thematic samples, corresponding to randomly selected fields of knowledge, suggests the statistical stability of these differences. The vocabulary of author KWs is more variable over time compared to the more stable vocabulary of editor-generated terms, which may be useful for the rapid identification of new terminology and scientific frontiers. Unlike editor-generated KWs, author-generated KWs cannot independently express the main themes and concepts of a document, as they supplement the terms that can be extracted from publication titles.

To achieve scientific and technological sovereignty, scientific research is the essential driver. However, the crucial role in selecting, evaluating, and promoting high-quality research results play peer-reviewed academic journals. Despite numerous studies on research and publication activity in Russian regions, there is a lack of comprehensive assessment of the operational conditions and development level of regional academic journals. This article analyses the ratio of journals published in Moscow versus Russian regions, based on data from the White List of Scientific Journals, and evaluates their level. Using journals of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) and its regional branches as an example, the article reveals a disparity between the number of the Level 1 journals in the White List journals published by the RAS in Moscow and the number of similarly ranked journals published by RAS institutions in the regions. A survey conducted in 2025 among editors-in-chief and editorial teams of Russian academic journals showed that most scientific journals are funded via a platinum open access model, i.e. by their founding institutions. However, this funding is insufficient to perform basic editorial functions at a high level, which is necessary for the quality presentation of Russian research to the global academia. Furthermore, editorial teams face staffing challenges. As key factors required for successful development, the representatives of academic journals point to stable funding from the founding institution and the targeted state support. Maintaining and improving the quality of Russian academic journals will contribute to the development of a scientific infrastructure that will foster the advancement of science and strengthens the scientific and technological sovereignty of Russia.

The use of language as a means of producing scientific knowledge is a key issue in the journal’s editorial policy. It determines the publication’s readership, the range of authors, its scientometric indicators, and its overall success and authority in the scientific community. In Russia, this issue is perceived through the prism of English and Russian. Meanwhile, the Russian Federation is a multilingual country. Whether the languages of the country’s peoples are the languages of science, including in scientific periodicals, is an issue that has not yet been the subject of a dedicated analysis. The author of this article seeks to describe the state of scientific periodicals in the languages of the peoples of Russia and the challenges to its development. A survey of the Scientific Electronic Library platform (eLIBRARY.RU) revealed 19 Russian journals that actually use national languages in publishing articles. They specialize in philology, pedagogy, and history. In the Russian Federation, there are laws addressing the use of national languages in scientific editorial work. The article concludes with evidence supporting the use of the languages of the peoples of Russia in Russian scientific periodicals. Such niche, thematic publications enrich scholarly knowledge with unique research areas on the country’s history and its peoples. Non-Russian languages often become the only means for presenting research results in the form of scholarly articles. This is because it is often more logical to describe sources written in non-Russian languages in the original language of the source material, especially since translation can be quite difficult due to the lack of adequate vocabulary in Russian. National scientific periodicals fulfill a special mission in expanding the readership of Russian science in countries whose populations share a common language family. They contribute to the preservation of Russia’s linguistic and cultural heritage.

Introduction. Open access to scholarly knowledge is a core element of contemporary scholarly publishing policy and is actively promoted at both international and national levels. At the same time, empirical research shows that principled support for open access is not always accompanied by a uniform interpretation or consistent institutional implementation. In this context, the position of journal editors is of particular interest, as they are the actors who directly shape editorial policy and the dissemination practices of scholarly publications.

Purpose. To identify which definitions and key features of open access dominate in the perceptions of editors of Russian scholarly journals, and how these perceptions are reflected in stated editorial policies and in journals’ actual practices.

Materials and Methods. The study draws on data from an online survey of editors of Russian scholarly journals (N = 138) representing a range of subject areas and serving as editors-in-chief, deputy editors, managing editors, and scientific editors. The questionnaire included closed- and open-ended items designed to elicit normative orientations and practices related to open access. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and thematic analysis of open-ended responses.

Results. According to the survey (N = 138), most respondents declare support for open access, yet their understanding of it is heterogeneous: responses to the question about the definition of open access were distributed almost evenly between interpreting open access as free access to the full text and understanding it as a regime that entails additional reuse rights/licensing. At the level of implementation, the study identifies a persistent gap between the declared access model and its institutional articulation: although 89.9% of editorial teams characterize their content dissemination as immediate open access, 18.8% of journals provide no information about open access on their websites. Conceptual ambiguity is also evident in the classification of open access models: about one third of respondents do not distinguish the typology, which correlates with fragmented licensing and contractual practices and limited digital infrastructure. Publication fees are not the dominant mechanism and are generally viewed critically by editors.

Conclusion. The findings suggest that within the Russian editorial community, open access functions primarily as a normative orientation rather than as a fully institutionalized journal model. The study highlights the need to shift discussions of open access from declarative support toward the operationalization of legal, infrastructural, and organizational mechanisms that ensure the sustainability and reproducibility of open scholarly dissemination practices.

The development of open science ideas and principles has facilitated the spread of open access resources (OARs), creating a wide range of information retrieval and bibliometric capabilities for analyzing various documents, journals, authors, organizations, research areas, thanks to the increased effectiveness of metadata, the links between resources, the implementation of proprietary classification systems in OARs, and data enrichment using artificial intelligence technologies. Metadata plays a crucial role in enhancing the effectiveness of OARs, as it serves as a means of document management, ensuring their identification, systematization, visibility, search, discovery, and access control in information retrieval systems. However, unified approaches are lacking regarding 1) the representation of metadata in OARs, 2) the development of classification schemes and services for processing search results, and 3) the presentation of search fields. This exacerbates the problems often encountered when working with information resources related to metadata quality (incompleteness, inaccuracy, errors, inconsistencies, subjectivity in subjectification and systematization) and their interoperability during automatic exchange, processing, and use. The study aims to analyze the effectiveness of metadata representation in major scientific OARs and their functionality for document search and processing. To achieve this goal, the first stage involved a content analysis of 10 reviews from 2023–2025. These reviews compared major scientific OARs (Crossref, Dimensions, OpenAlex, Scilit, Semantic Scholar, The Lens, etc.) with international scientometric databases Scopus and Web of Science Core Collection in terms of metadata completeness and quality, confirming the potential of OARs as bibliographic sources for scientific information retrieval. To validate these findings, the second stage involved an analysis of metadata in four selected major scientific OARs (OpenAlex, Dimensions, The Lens, and Semantic Scholar), assessing their service functionality for conducting bibliometric research and visualizing the resulting data. Furthermore, the proprietary or adopted document classification systems within the OARs were examined, along with the specifics of exporting large volumes of metadata. A comparative analysis of OpenAlex, Dimensions, The Lens, and Semantic Scholar revealed differences in field completeness, analytical services, export limitations, as well as typical metadata quality vulnerabilities. Nevertheless, the prospects for the development of these resources for scientific information retrieval and research are acknowledged, considering their continuously evolving functionality and the use of reliable sources for data enrichment, such as Crossref, ORCID, ROR, etc. The presence of international identifiers, the resolution of ambiguities in description, and addressing issues in document indexing when assigning additional metadata fields in OARs will enable their use as effective information resources. This will contribute to forming a more transparent research landscape, enable multiparameter analysis of the development of scientific fields and collaboration, facilitate multifaceted study of research topics, and enhance the visibility of publications in the global information space. It will also increase the citation potential of authors, scientific organizations, and journals through inclusion in a greater number of interconnected resources, provision of additional metadata for publication, and the availability of service capabilities and functionalities for further processing and presentation using visualization tools, knowledge mapping instruments, and others.

This article presents the results of a retrospective qualitative analysis of scientific article titles published in the journal General Reanimatology, aiming to identify and prevent typical discrepancies with the scientific and methodological recommendations for the titles formulation. Typical discrepancies include excessive length, suboptimal positioning of key terms, substitution of the research objective with descriptions of routine procedures, exaggeration or misrepresentation of the study’s scope, structural mimicry of previously published titles, use of colloquial or popular-science language, and stylistically inappropriate promotional elements. These flaws can negatively impact the perception and citation of scientific material. The cases report examines the cause-and-effect relationships between flaws in title wording and the potential of the article underestimation by expert’s and bibliometric analysis. Ways for improving the titles formulation included the principles of KISS (Keep It Short & Simple) and Less is More. Their use restores the accuracy of the title’s correspondence to the scope of the study and increases the scientific recognition of the publication. The results can be used by authors in preparing articles for biomedical journals; by reviewers and editors in internal review of manuscripts and the development of editorial standards for scientific biomedical journals; and in teaching academic writing.