An assessment of Hungarian journals by the IXth Section of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Comparison of Hungarian and international citations

Abstract

The issue of measuring scientific performance has recently become increasingly important in scientific discussions. For the quantification of the value of publications, it is essential to compare the journals that publish them, together with establishing their ranking. Journal rankings are mainly based on the citations to the articles published in them, thus a citation can be viewed as a “vote” cast by the citing article or journal on the cited article or journal. The IXth Section of the Hungarian Academy of Science (Economics and Law) expects doctoral candidates to publish papers in international and domestic journals designated by the scientific committees of the Section. Irrespective of the committees’ recommendations most citations are received by articles written in domestic, category 'A' journals, both in the short and long term. Hungarian journals typically do not receive internationally quoted, independent citations from journals publishing in their own scientific field. They obtain the bulk of their citations from internationally indexed Hungarian journals. The number of international citations is a fraction of all citations, although international citations are required for having journals indexed by Scopus.