The fundamental importance of the peer review in the context of scientific communication determines the unprecedented attention paid to it by researchers around the world. New trends in scientific communication are reflected in the transformation of the forms of peer review and the roles of its stakeholders. Within the framework of this article, the challenges faced by a modern reviewer are analyzed, the transforming models of peer review are presented, and the most significant issues generated by the logic of the development of the peer review process are outlined.

An analysis of the risks confronted by the editorial staff of the scientific Journal of Almaz – Antey Air and Space Defence Corporation was made. It is shown that one of the risks brought the journal into a state of stress test and significant increase in input parameters, which affected the work of the editorial board. The article provides data on reducing the negative impact of a stress test and presents the results of simulation modeling of the impact of a stress test on the editorial board of a scientific journal. These input parameters were the flow of articles to the journal, which exceeded the average values of the process reviewing for a short period of time by ten times. To eliminate the impact of stress testing on the work of the editorial board of the scientific journal, measures were taken to neutralize it in the form of an increase in the number of reviewers and early initiation of articles. In addition to the results on reducing the impact of stress testing, a simulation of an impossible flow of articles that exceeds the average by a hundred times was performed, and the time indicators of its processing are given. The model is based on the Monte Carlo method under the assumption that each reviewer has an average processing time of the article received by him, as well as the law of distribution of this time. The results of the correlation analysis of the simulation results and real data on the processing of the received articles are presented, which allow us to talk about the relationship between real and simulated processes.

The MEDLINE database and PubMed.com web-platform are the world’s best-known and most used sources for search scientific information in biology and medicine. Indexing in MEDLINE and making a journal searchable through PubMed.com is a most powerful tool to promote it worldwide. No other databases, even Scopus and Web of Science, can be compared with MEDLINE in terms of its effect on the readability and availability in web-search results. At the same time, medical and biological journals from Russia have serious problems with the MEDLINE indexation results in an extremely low presence of publications from Russian journals in this database. Over the past decade, the number of Russian journals indexed in MEDLINE has significantly decreased. Present article discusses the main characteristics of the MEDLINE database and PubMed.com, their journal selection process and the reasons for their high importance in scientific journals promotion, as well as the experience of submitting journals for peer review to be indexed in this database. Both positive and negative experience of preparing a journal for indexing in MEDLINE is considered, this can help the editors and publishers of all biology and medicine journals in Russia in solving this task.

The success of a research journal rides on many factors and can be achieved only with a thorough analysis of the tasks and obstacles that arise at different work stages. The initial design stage is of particular importance, since the well-laid “foundation” of the journal is what emerges as its ticket to a bright future. The article discusses a number of key issues that require an exhaustive analysis at the stage of developing the journal’s conceptual framework. These issues include, in primis, determining the narrowly focused scientific focus of the publication, clarifying the type of published content, choosing the language (or languages) of publication, organizing the editorial board, developing the journal’s website and building a strategy for its active promotion. The experience of analysing and addressing these issues in developing the Training, Language and Culture journal is reported in the article through the prism of relevant statistical data, as well as international academic and publishing practices and trends, which acknowledgement turned out essential for the subsequent efficient performance, as well as for the title’s inclusion in Scopus.

The article is devoted to the problem of assessing the quality of scientific publications. It is emphasized that the formal ranking of an article is currently determined, as a rule, not so much by the data obtained or formulated concepts, as by the scientometric indicators of the corresponding journals. Approaches to determining the ranking of an article based on the analysis of its citation (impact factor and its analogues) and the number of mentions in social networks (so called altmetrics), as well as the number of downloads of the paper from the publisher’s website are considered. The authors emphasize the significant role of the appearance of author-paid articles in the current change in the situation with scientific publications. It is assumed that the thorough commercialization of the process of publishing their works by scientists has led to a serious deterioration in their scientific component due to the reducing requirements for the format and content of manuscripts sent to the editors of paid journals. The authors express the hope that the “informal” approach to the evaluation of scientific articles, which is based on their content, but not the ratings of the editions that published these works, has not lost its relevance even at the present stage.