The article presents the main editorial posts and duties of responsible editors in scholarly journals. Although each editorial team sets its own policy, there are common regulations for ethical conduct, which are endorsed by global editorial associations, such as the Committee on Publication Ethics, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, the Council of Science Editors, and the World Association of Medical Editors. Guidelines of these associations are helpful for organizing a well-functioning editorial team, performing unbiased quality checks (peer review), and avoiding claims of illegitimate, or ‘predatory’, publishing. Journal editors should be skilled in substantive and ethical editing to contribute to the quality and international visibility of their publications. The role of chief editors is particularly important for selecting highly-skilled sections editors, arranging peer review, and publishing original and ethically sound research and reviews. Also, at the current stage of digitization and proliferation of periodicals, the role of research integrity editors, regional editors, statistical editors, art designers, and invited editors of special issues is gaining importance for international visibility and indexability of the journals.

The article investigates issues that Russian scholars encounter when they attempt to publish their research findings in peer-reviewed journals indexed in Scopus and Web of Science. Low level of English proficiency among researchers, on the one hand, and the lack of deep scientific interdisciplinary knowledge of translators, on the other hand, complicates the promotion of Russian scientific achievements in the international academic community. As one of the efficient solutions, the author suggests establishing writing centers on the basis of Russian universities to teach scientific discourse — written as well as spoken — to undergraduates, graduates, junior researchers and academic staff. Acquired skills in scientific writing in English can enable Russian scientists to become independent members of intercultural scientific communication.

Abstract: Aim: To survey opinion of the assertion that useful metric based input requires a «basket of metrics» to allow more varied and nuanced insights into merit than is possible by using one metric alone.
Methods: A poll was conducted to survey opinions (N=204; average response rate=61 %) within the international research community on using usage metrics in merit systems.
Results: «Research is best quantified using multiple criteria» was selected by most (40 %) respondents as the reason that usage metrics are valuable, and 95 % of respondents indicated that they would be likely or very likely to use usage metrics in their assessments of research merit, if they had access to them. There was a similar degree of preference for simple and sophisticated usage metrics confirming that one size does not fit all, and that a one metric approach to merit is insufficient.
Conclusion: This survey demonstrates a clear willingness and a real appetite to use a «basket of metrics» to broaden the ways in which research merit can be detected and demonstrated.

Correct and complete affiliation — the author’s profile and institutional address — is a compulsory requirement of scientific publications indexed in such international citation indices as Scopus and Web of Science. To ensure that the automatic journal search finds the correct scientific article or any other journal publication indexed in these databases, the metadata must contain correct information relating to publications of a particular author, the name of his/her organization, city and the country. These data are also used for the journal analysis. The absence of any of the essential parts of the affiliation, i.e. the organization name, city, or the country, leads to incorrect indexing, distortion of statistics and bibliometric indicators, which eventually results in the loss of important analytical information in citation indexes. This article provides recommendations on how to avoid such losses.

This article provides a brief introduction to the problem of predatory publishers, those that exploit the gold open access publishing model for their own profit. They use spam to solicit article submissions but often fail to conduct a proper peer review. They accept most articles submitted in order to quickly earn the payments from authors. Because they introduce pseudo-science into the scholarly record, predatory publishers are hurting science and communication of science.