ANALYSIS AND NEWS
Trust of IP and peer review We heard many historical anecdotes about evasion of review processes, and tales of professors cutting and pasting entire articles from print-only journals. Despite the prevalence of digital publishing, improvement is still debatable. Although online programmes such as ScholarOne and Editorial Manager offer more transparency and consistency, many Russian journals do not use these and figures are therefore hard to come by. On the other side of the argument, Russian faculty had the same fears as those in other developing countries: a feeling of bias against them in favour of established, ‘Western’ scholars. There were lots of call for editorial support in the guise of language editing, reviewer training and paper development workshops.
In conclusion
funding means that publishers must win friends and influence people at the centre before seeing success;
l Language remains a barrier. Older faculty are limited in English, and Russian textbooks often have a limited print-run to achieve margin;
l Culture is vital to understand. On all theoretical models, Russian culture is profoundly different to that of Western Europe and the USA (hence the continued importance of the kommandirovka in increasing understanding on both sides);
l University structures and systems are slow to change, since older faculty and administrative staff remain from the Soviet era; and
l Corruption still runs deep. As one interviewee told us, larger companies have the wherewithal to bring issues to court, but smaller subsidiaries will struggle.
Demand for English publications Language skills appeared to be driven by publication needs. Almost without exception, younger faculty were more globally aware and had more international exposure, and expected to find some (not necessarily all/ core) publications in English. By contrast, older faculty felt they could achieve their goals by reading and publishing in Russian.
Faculty requirement and rewards
Journal indexing is crucial, and the approach is not particularly nuanced. Despite the regular objections to journal impact factors thrown
www.researchinformation.info @researchinfo AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2015 Research Information 5
up by (among others) the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), many individual universities hold to an ‘ISI is best’ approach, offering sliding scales of cash incentives for Web of Science/Scopus publications to enhance the institution’s prominence.
President Putin has targeted a 50 per cent increase in Russian output in SCI/ SSCI journal within two years, a figure that appears all but impossible. Even if the quality of Russian research did consistently reach international publication standards – a debatable point, given the THE data – it will take longer than two years for this to filter through into journal publications.
Kazan Federal University
Russia has enormous untapped potential. However, it became obvious during our visits that the ‘Wild East’ holds such risks that social science publishers must be very sure of their ground. Publishers, libraries and universities seeking exchange programmes should focus on relationships and long-term sustainability, not on quick wins, and outside the hard sciences, this requires greater effort and investment. With that in mind, it is hardly surprising, given the pressures on companies to maximise ROI in the shortest possible times, that so few are willing to take a chance on Russia.
Martyn Lawrence is publisher at Emerald Group Publishing
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