The landscape of scientific communication imposes obvious requirements on its actors, which are not always unambiguously interpreted by the latter. The basic criterion of scientific communication is its quality. Since scientific journals serve as the main channel for rational debates based on facts, their quality level seems to be the most significant for the development of scientific knowledge. Today, scientific journals are undergoing a massive transformation: from changing the format of content presentation to becoming a body of collective communication. These changes cannot but affect the quality characteristics of journals. Since the changes are multilateral in nature, the scientific, editorial, and publishing communities have not formed an unambiguous opinion about which criteria of the journal characterize its quality aspects, and which can be attributed to “formal”, “technical”. In this article, the authors, based on Russian and international expert opinion, analyze the quality criteria for journals. Based on the data of the questionnaire developed by the authors, which considers the categories and criteria of the Scopus expert system, a survey of editors (n = 130) of Russian scientific journals was conducted. The questionnaire was completed anonymously, and the study participants were made aware of its objectives. The data obtained made it possible to analyze the editors’ ideas about the qualitative characteristics of a scientific journal and their influence on its promotion. A sufficiently deep understanding by the editors of the essence and specifics of the analyzed characteristics was recorded. At the same time, certain aspects require targeted work on their optimization and development. There is also an obvious need for further research on the topic, considering the subject field of journals traditions.

The current sanctions introduced against Russian science are imposing serious consequences    on interactions between researchers all over the world. In order to analyse approaches to mitigating the resulting negative effects, the author turns to the theories of external shocks and crisis management. Criteria that characterise modern external shocks are distinguished, on which basis transformations in the editorial policy of a Russian journal aimed at minimising the effects of international isolation under the conditions of limited resources are proposed. Priority directions in the editorial policy include shifting the geographical focus of editorial activities, restructuring the editorial portfolio in favour of review articles and special issues, rethinking the role of email marketing strategies and promoting journals through alternative social networking resources. Each transformation direction is discussed in terms of feasible implementation tools. The importance of monitoring emerging types of articles that are promising from the standpoint of increasing the visibility and recognition of a journal (such as those outlining frontier research directions) is emphasized. The author argues that the proposed transformations in the editorial policy of a journal entails no radical changes in the thematic scope or content selection process. Moreover, these measures can be tailored to meet the specific needs of a particular publisher. Directions for future research are outlined.

Increasing citation and improving the impact factor is a challenging task for both authors and scientific journals. It is particularly so for Russian journals indexed in international scientometric databases, including Web of Science and Scopus. This study shows that researchers consider inefficient language strategies to be one of the main reasons for poor international outreach. This article explores    the strategies of several Russian journals indexed in Scopus as of March 2022, identifies their advantages and disadvantages as well as the subsequent risks. The study offers recommendations for choosing an optimal language strategy, including the one aimed at increasing citation in international and national databases and promoting rated Russian journals internationally. Based on the analysis of the journals indexed in the Scopus database, six linguistic models have been identified. The study has shown that the bilingual format – publishing in Russian and English – provides the best visibility at the national and international levels.

The article is devoted to the development of the institute of peer review considered in the context of influencing the scientific maturity of periodicals. The choice of this topic is due, on the one hand, to new scientific and technological trends in the sustainable development of the national economy, on the other, to the upcoming information isolation, the onset of which has a high probabilistic character and serious negative consequences for Russian magazines. Therefore, Russian periodicals should be ready for any development of events and have an adaptation potential for new economic realities, i.e. to be scientifically mature. The article proposed an author’s understanding of the definition “scientific maturity” of the journal and revealed the peculiarities of peer review that determine it. The article also presents the results of a survey conducted by Institute of Economics of the Ural Branch of RAS and the Association of Scientific Editors and Publishers, among representatives of Russian journals of economic, social, technical, humanitarian, medical sciences, which make it possible to identify general trends and patterns of formation of the peer review institute in Russia. The author’s rapid analysis of respondents’ responses made it possible to form a fundamental basis for the development of fundamentally new options for improving the work of publishers with reviewers, including the selection of experts based on a single database of reviewers. It gives the process of assessing the quality of the content of articles an interdisciplinary nature, as well as flexibility and higher performance.

The peer review process is an extremely important and time-consuming step in preparing a manuscript for publication. It often takes longer than all other stages of article processing. Due to the complexity of peer reviewing, it becomes necessary to analyze it and determine the key points that you should pay attention to when planning the work of the editorial office. In this study, the authors used data obtained in the process of work with reviewers of the journals “Vestnik Moskovskogo Universiteta. Seriya 16. Biologiya” and “Moscow University Biological Sciences Bulletin” in 2017–2021, as well as information on articles received by the editorial office in the same period time. The sample of peer reviewers consisted of 319 specialists from various fields of biology and related disciplines. The results of the analysis showed that the average time spent on the primary review was about 11 days, and the average time during which experts respond to the invitation was about 2 days. Reviews received by the editors over five years, on average, contain a little less than 3 000 characters, the volume of reviews does not correlate with the timing of the reviews and their quality. In recent years, the editorial office has managed to reduce the proportion of formal uninformative reviews to 6 %. Both women and men, employees of both universities and research institutes, scientists with candidate and doctoral degrees are equally involved in the work on articles. The important role of reviewers in improving the article and at the same time insufficient encouragement of this important work are emphasized. The results obtained can be useful to the editors of scientific journals when they plan the stages of reviewing articles.

The paper describes the editors’ experience of development and promotion of a scientific and technical journal Gyroscopy and Navigation intended for scientists and specialists in the art, and published in the Russian and English versions. The effectiveness of various tools for increasing the citation of the journal is analyzed, and the examples of their practical use are given. The features of interaction with the authors and readership of both the Russian and English-language versions of the journal, i.e., specialists  in navigation and motion control of various moving objects are shown. Work with the Russian-speaking audience of the journal is based on direct contacts with researchers through online seminars, which facilitates the formation of a community of scientists loyal to the publication and interested in the journal development. At present, one of the main goals of the journal is to increase the level of its global reputation and influence. This is solved by sending regular information letters about the publication of new issues   of the journal with a brief description of published materials to particular addressees. As a result of the measures taken, the number of downloads of full texts of articles in the English version of the journal, as well as their citation, has increased significantly (2.5 times), which, in turn, has considerably increased the rating of the journal in the Scopus database. For example, the CiteScore index increased from 1.7 to 2.6 between 2019 and 2021. In this paper, it is shown that the difficulties in promoting the Russian-language version of the journal are due to the small audience of Russian-speaking specialists in this subject area, and due to the specific procedure of journal ratings calculation in the Russian Science Citation Index.

The article describes the experience of the editorial board of scientific publications at Penza  State University in retracting duplicate publications. It provides a practical example illustrating the problems that arise at each stage of the retraction process. It shows that a significant part of these problems lies in the legal field and requires founders and publishers to be aware of the norms of the current legislation not only in the field of intellectual property, but also in the field of protecting the honor, dignity and business reputation of authors.

The study analyzes the publication activity of Russian scientists working in the social and humanitarian sphere through an assessment of Russian scientific journals of this subject. Communication channels in the social and humanitarian sphere, which are used to promote scientific results, as well as the possibility of replacing these channels, in condition when one of them is excluded. Special attention is paid to the quantitative and qualitative analysis of Russian journals in the core of the Russian Science Citation Index due to the fact that foreign journals specializing in social sciences and humanities may become inacceptable to most Russian scientists. The analysis was carried out for the period 2012–2020, in some cases data from 2021 were used for comparison. The results of the analysis showed that Russian scientists still have prospects for promoting their results in the world scientific space.

Research-to-practice conference, the theme of which matches the content of one or several journal sections, is considered as one of ways to solve the problem of new authors’ calling to the journal. On the one hand, the role of conference’s media partner is an element of journal promotion. Оn the other hand, the partnership with University conference for graduate and postgraduate students imposes additional load on editorial staff. When their workload is already high in a routine mode, they delegate conference papers’ editing and prepress to authors that can’t ensure high quality of publications. Moreover, if conference papers are published simultaneously with publication of journal articles based on conference reports the problem of text authenticity arises (i.e. self-plagiarism). These circumstances cause journal staff to doubt whether participation in university conferences as media partner makes sense.

Конференция была направлена на обсуждение актуальных вопросов развития российских научных журналов в современных условиях, достижения ими более высокого национального и международного уровней, определения места в решении задач популяризации и продвижения результатов научной деятельности, в создании национальной системы оценки результативности научных исследований и разработок, сохранения и повышения позиций в международных информационных системах.

8 августа 2022 г. пришло тяжелое известие о том, что в 49 лет оборвалась жизнь нашего дорогого коллеги и друга Дмитрия Анатольевича Катунина.