First, the influence of academic journals and its composition
1. The influence of academic journals
The influence of academic journals is a comprehensive effect based on the academic level and characteristics of academic journals and marked by social credibility and reader recognition, which is closely related to the quality and characteristics of academic journals, social credibility and reader recognition.
The quality of academic journals is closely related to their influence. The quality of academic journals, especially academic quality, is the foundation and power source of academic journals' influence, which determines their influence and scale. The higher the quality of academic journals, especially academic quality, the easier it is to attract academic attention, the easier it is to be read and accepted by more experts and scholars, and the greater its influence may be. On the contrary, if the quality of an academic journal is very low, it is difficult or impossible to have influence. The quality of academic journals mainly depends on the academic level and innovative value of academic papers published in journals. The quality of academic journals is an internal thing, and the influence of academic journals is its external performance and its objective effect.
The characteristics of academic journals are also closely related to their academic influence. Academic journals should not only publish high-level academic papers and reach a higher academic level, but also show their own unique academic characteristics. Whether there are academic features and distinctive features also determines the influence and scale of academic journals to a certain extent. A large number of facts show that academic journals with distinctive academic characteristics are more likely to be favored by readers and have greater influence. On the contrary, if an academic journal has no focus in content, or can't continue to carry out research, and all disciplines and majors are equally divided and comprehensive, it is difficult to have academic influence.
The influence of academic journals is not only based on their academic quality and characteristics, but also guaranteed by their correct and rigorous style of study and style of writing. Only by insisting on academic innovation, seeking truth from facts, rigorous scholarship, strict peer review, fine editing and proofreading, and maintaining a high academic taste and vivid, accurate and fluent written expression, can an academic journal form a good image among readers and society, thus being trusted and accepted by readers. On the other hand, if a journal does not pay attention to quality, academic ethics and strict control, or even publishes articles that plagiarize others' achievements, it will be difficult for readers and society to recognize it, have an impact, and will be spurned by everyone.
The influence of academic journals also depends to a great extent on their social credibility and readers' recognition. As a spiritual and cultural product, the influence of academic journals should and must be tested by readers and the market. Whether it is welcomed by readers such as experts and scholars, and whether it is recognized by academic evaluation institutions and peer experts is an important symbol of its academic influence and influence. The academic influence of academic journals is fundamental, the first important and intrinsic thing, and its social influence and reader recognition are derivatives of academic influence, which is determined by academic influence. The size of academic influence determines the size of social influence: if academic influence is large, it is easy to have social influence, and if academic influence is small, it is difficult to have social influence.
2. Elements of the influence of academic journals
As for the elements of the influence of academic journals, academic circles have not yet seen special research. However, from the research on the evaluation criteria of the quality or influence of core journals and various academic journals, we can see relevant viewpoints. At present, there are different viewpoints and practices in academic circles. Some scholars have summarized it into two systems from the perspective of academic journal evaluation criteria, namely, multi-index system and single-index system. The multi-index system, represented by the evaluation system of Peking University Chinese core journals and China Academy of Social Sciences core journals, is called Northern Department. The single index system, represented by the evaluation system of Nanjing University's Citation Index of Chinese Social Sciences (csscI), is called the Southern School. According to the evaluation system of Peking University and China Academy of Social Sciences, there are nine factors that constitute the influence of academic journals, namely, the number of requests, abstracts, citations, abstract rate, influencing factors, winning or being included in the retrieval system, the rate of funded papers, and the number of web downloads. NTU uses citation index to evaluate the academic quality and influence of academic journals. The system uses citation frequency, impact factors, half-life and impact breadth to evaluate, from which we can see that Nantah system recognizes the impact factors of academic journals.
We believe that the factors that constitute the influence of academic journals should at least include the following three aspects: First, the academic influence of academic journals includes two items: First, the level of academic innovation. Mainly reflected in the citation rate, influence breadth, transfer rate, award-winning rate, high-impact papers rate and other objective data of academic journals. The second is the distinctive effect of running a magazine. Academic journals, whether professional or comprehensive, have a characteristic, that is, they form their own contents in their own professional fields or related multidisciplinary fields, so that they become required reading documents for researchers in related disciplines to study a certain problem, that is, they form their own "fist products"-brand columns and influential research fields. This is a very important factor that determines whether an academic journal is influential and how influential it is. Second, the influence of academic journals on social practice is mainly reflected in that the opinions and theories published by academic journals provide theoretical support for economic and social development, or the opinions and suggestions put forward are adopted by the government or used as reference for decision-making. Third, the social credibility of academic journals and readers' recognition: social credibility includes the number and order of journal awards, the selection of core journals and important databases at home and abroad, and the evaluation of relevant media organizations and peer experts. Readers' recognition includes the circulation of printed periodicals at home and abroad, the international and domestic dissemination of electronic media such as China Knowledge Network, and online visits.
Second, the impact evaluation index of academic journals
System construction
There are many research achievements on academic journal evaluation (including the evaluation of academic journal influence, the evaluation of academic journal quality, especially the selection of academic journal core journals, etc. ), but the views are very different. For example, in recent years, some scholars regard quantitative evaluation as the hottest.
The main methods of periodical evaluation are very doubtful, even sharp criticism. I think the most important thing to evaluate the influence of academic journals is to build a relatively scientific, reasonable and feasible evaluation standard and evaluation index system.
1. Discussion on several evaluation index systems
Summarize and sort out the relevant research on the evaluation index of academic journals' influence in recent years. There are three representative viewpoints, which can be discussed again:
First of all, it is considered that two main indicators, academic radiation and market share, should be introduced to effectively construct the evaluation system of academic journals' influence. Commentators believe that the academic radiation "can comprehensively evaluate the academic level and academic status of academic journals through the main indicators such as the total cited frequency (the total number of papers published by the journal since its inception in a statistical year), that is, the annual indicator (the proportion of the total cited papers published by a journal to the total number of papers published in that year) and the fund output rate (the indicator is the proportion of the papers funded by the fund to the total number of papers published in the journal)." Market share represents the function of academic journals to users, and it is an important indicator reflecting the position and sustainable development potential of academic journals in market competition, which can be expressed by market effective capacity; The effective market capacity "is equal to the ratio of the actual circulation of a periodical to the total circulation of similar periodicals in this discipline in that year". After reading this article, we think there are two issues that need to be discussed. First of all, from the perspective of a large evaluation system, it is biased to limit the evaluation index of academic journal influence to academic radiation and market share. Based on years of experience in editing academic journals, we believe that the evaluation of the influence of academic journals should at least include the influence of social practice and the social credibility of academic journals in addition to the above two indicators. Secondly, after careful analysis of the above viewpoints, the connotation of academic radiation and market share of academic journals is also inappropriate. First, academic radiation is limited to citation frequency, citation index and fund output rate, which is obviously not comprehensive, scientific and reasonable. Its incompleteness lies in the omission of recognized influencing factors, such as paper conversion rate, award-winning rate and high-impact paper rate, which represent the academic level and influence of academic journals. Unreasonable and unscientific: (1) Taking cited frequency as an important index of academic evaluation has always been questioned by periodical and academic circles. The problem is that the cited frequency is influenced by disciplines (such as humanities and social sciences) on the one hand, and by the total number of articles published in academic journals (such as a periodical, bimonthly and monthly) on the other hand. (2) Although the citation index can reflect the speed or time difference of periodical papers being used by users and represent the speed of the diffusion of periodical academic papers, it is not the most important index to determine the influence of academic journals for humanities and social sciences academic journals and academic papers; Due to the influence of the inheritance of humanities and social sciences, truly valuable and high-level academic achievements may not always show their value and function in the construction of a certain discipline and the research in a certain field. On the contrary, most of the works with great academic value can maintain their academic influence for a long period of time and be referenced, quoted and used for reference. Therefore, it is not necessary to give up the impact factors, transfer rate and other indicators, and take the diffusion and utilization speed of academic journals as an important factor to judge the influence of journals. (3) For natural sciences, the fund output rate is indeed an important indicator for judging scientific and technological academic journals, but for humanities and social sciences, it seems that it needs specific analysis, because whether a paper is produced by funds does not mean the value and level of the paper. In practice, this often happens. Although the paper is the result of fund projects, the level is average, but a high-level paper is written by the author after years of research and tempering. Therefore, the above three. Secondly, evaluating the academic influence of academic journals by market share should be a very important indicator, but from its specific connotation, there are obvious gaps and limitations. In fact, to determine the status and influence of an academic journal in readers and society depends not only on its market share such as users and circulation, but also on whether it has been recognized and positively evaluated by peer experts (including subject experts and periodical experts), as well as its inclusion in core journals and important databases at home and abroad and its award-winning status in periodical evaluation of government and industry organizations. In addition, the "effective market capacity" is only based on circulation, and does not include online communication such as China HowNet, and the number of visits such as reader click-through rate and download rate is also outdated.
Secondly, it is considered that the evaluation of academic journals' influence should adopt internationally accepted indicators, and it is proposed that high-impact academic journals should have three points: first, large readership and circulation; Second, it is included in the international authoritative retrieval system or database; Third, the cited rate of published papers is high. Because this paper mainly analyzes the international influence of academic journals in China, it does not analyze the evaluation indicators in general (or universal) sense, such as retrieval system or database collection, and only mentions international authoritative institutions without involving domestic core journals or related source databases. As an index system for evaluating the influence of academic journals, the three standards put forward in this paper can grasp the key points and hit the key points, but they lack comprehensiveness, systematicness and generality, and there are many missing items. For example, an important indicator that can reflect the academic influence of academic journals only refers to the citation rate, but does not involve the paper conversion rate, award-winning rate, fund generation rate, high-impact paper rate, academic characteristics and so on. In addition, the impact on the social practice of academic journals is not involved, which needs to be greatly supplemented and improved.
Thirdly, it is considered that the evaluation index system of academic journals' influence should include two aspects: first, the citation situation, which can objectively reflect the academic influence of academic journals by using four groups of indicators in NTU's Citation Index of Chinese Social Sciences; Second, the adoption (or adoption) situation and its actual effect, and the specific index content or data collection and processing need further study. "This paper puts forward the academic influence and social practice influence of academic journals as indicators to evaluate the influence of academic journals, which can be said to be the key indicators to evaluate the influence of academic journals. However, the specific content still lacks comprehensiveness or fuzziness, which deserves further study and supplement.
2. Assumption of establishing an index system for evaluating the influence of academic journals.
We believe that the indicators that constitute the influence of academic journals should be scientific, comprehensive and operable. Specifically, it should include three main items:
(1) Academic influence. It is embodied in two aspects: first, the level of academic innovation, which is the basis and basis for determining the influence of academic journals. The influence of academic journals comes from their academic level, especially the innovative ideas, novel materials and profound and sufficient arguments of academic papers. If the academic papers published in academic journals have no academic innovation value and a certain academic level, their academic influence will not be discussed. The so-called academic level and academic value of academic journals, if objectively evaluated, should mainly be reflected in the transfer rate, cited rate (including cited frequency, impact factor, five-year impact factor, immediate citation index in the current year), award-winning rate, and the number and proportion of high-impact papers published. In the previous quality evaluation of academic journals, we did not pay due attention to high-level and high-impact papers, which we think is a big mistake. In fact, the most important indicator that can really determine the academic level or academic influence of a journal should be the status of its published high-impact papers. For the standard of high-impact papers, please refer to the relevant provisions in the Measures for Quality Management of Social Science Journals, -8 of the General Administration of Press and Publication. In our opinion, apart from whether the published papers have been adopted by party committees and governments at or above the provincial level as reference for decision-making, we should mainly refer to recognized important abstract publications, such as Xinhua Digest, China Social Sciences Digest, Academic Digest of Liberal Arts in Colleges and Universities, and Reprinted Full Text of Newspapers Copied by the National People's Congress, or be reprinted by more than three abstract publications at the same time, or won high-level awards at or above the provincial level, or be among the best in terms of visits and cited frequency.
The second is academic characteristics. This is also an important index to determine the influence of academic journals. Including the characteristics and binding of academic journals.
Formal features such as design and printing. A high-level and high-grade academic journal should not only have high academic level and valuable content, but also fully display its own characteristics and high level in the planning and setting of columns, distinctive academic personality characteristics, attention to editing quality, excellent cover, layout and printing. The influence of famous academic journals, such as China Social Sciences, Literature, History and Philosophy, and Journal of Peking University, mainly comes from their distinctive academic characteristics of paying attention to the study of basic theoretical issues of humanities and social sciences. Journal of Guangxi University for Nationalities, as a journal sponsored by ordinary universities, was selected into the famous journal project of the Ministry of Education, which is closely related to the academic influence caused by the research characteristics of anthropology and ethnology. However, some small-scale local colleges and universities, such as Yunmeng Journal of Hunan Institute of Science and Technology, Yindu Journal of anyang normal University and Xiaogan College, have had great influence in academic circles in recent years, mainly because they have distinctive content characteristics in the fields of contemporary academic history research, Oracle Bone Inscriptions research, ancient philology research and filial piety culture research.
(2) The influence of social practice. Actively participating in the research and solving major theoretical and practical problems raised in China's reform, opening up and modernization, providing theoretical guidance and intellectual support for the decision-making of the party and the government, and promoting the development of economic construction and social civilization are the historical tasks entrusted by the state to China's humanities and social sciences research since the new period, and also the social responsibilities that academic journals of humanities and social sciences should consciously assume. Therefore, to evaluate the influence of an academic journal, we should pay special attention to its contribution and value in studying and solving major practical problems involving the national economy and people's livelihood. A large number of facts show that newspapers and periodicals that attach importance to studying major social practical problems and put forward valuable opinions and suggestions for promoting economic construction and social development, and their views and conclusions are taken as reference for decision-making by the government, will arouse social repercussions and attract the attention of academia and society. For example, at the beginning of reform and opening up, Guangming Daily published the article "Practice is the only criterion for testing truth", which made great contributions to breaking the spiritual shackles of "two whatevers", launching China's ideological emancipation movement, and even opening a new era centered on reform and opening up and economic construction, and had a great social impact. For example, many research results of famous economists such as Wu Jinglian, Liu Guoguang and Hu Angang. Although the citation rate can't rank in the forefront of this discipline, their suggestions are adopted by the government as a reference for decision-making, and social practice has a very wide influence. Journal of Shaanxi Normal University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition) has attached great importance to studying and solving major practical theoretical problems raised in modernization from a multidisciplinary perspective for many years, such as Research Achievements of Lanzhou Military Region published in 1970s, Exploration of the Site of Emperor Qin Shihuang's Straight Road, Study on the Changes of xi 'an River published in 1980s and Study on the Dynasty of Xi 'an Capital published in 1990s. Or directly serve the national defense construction, or put forward valuable suggestions for fundamentally solving the problem of xi 'an water source, or provide authoritative conclusions for the external publicity of Shaanxi Province and Xi 'an, which were adopted by provincial and municipal governments and organized and implemented by specialized working institutions, and produced great repercussions in academic circles and society. The journal was also highly praised by Guangming Daily for its commitment to the study of historical geography. The first batch of Journal of Shaanxi Normal University was selected into the famous journal project of the Ministry of Education, which has a great relationship with the academic level and social practice influence of the study of history and historical geography, which insists on making the past serve the present and serves the world.
(3) Social credibility and reader recognition. This is also a very important index to evaluate the influence of academic journals. Its contents specifically include the awards of academic journals in government publishing awards and periodical awards at or above the provincial level, and the recognition degree of journals by relevant academic evaluation and research institutions or library and information institutions (such as being selected into China's periodical phalanx, national or provincial and municipal famous periodicals construction projects, journals databases with influential income at home and abroad, core journals, statistical source journals, etc.). ). Personal evaluation of relevant media, academic institutions or peer experts and scholars at home and abroad (mainly positive articles in newspapers and periodicals, congratulations from experts, congratulatory letters and other comments), as well as the dissemination of periodicals at home and abroad (such as the dissemination, online reading, downloading and other visits of China HowNet at home and abroad) and distribution benefits.
Thirdly, the influence evaluation of academic journals should be correct.
Several problems in understanding and grasping
To evaluate the influence of academic journals scientifically and accurately, there are several relations that need to be correctly understood and handled.
1. The influence of academic papers and journals
The influence of academic papers is closely related to the influence of academic journals, but there are great differences: the influence of academic journals is a comprehensive reflection of the overall academic level, academic characteristics and social effects of a journal, and its evaluation object is an academic journal, and its influence is closely related to the level and efforts of editors. As mentioned above, the items to evaluate the influence of academic journals include not only the internal quality such as the innovative value of academic content, but also the external quality, social credibility and reader recognition of journals. The evaluation object of the influence of academic papers is specific papers, and its evaluation items are mainly academic contents, namely academic innovation, scientificity and its value to discipline construction and economic and social development. The influence of academic papers reflects the author's academic innovation level and the research depth of the articles, which is related to the influence of the academic journals that publish the papers, but there is no necessary relationship between them, and there is no positive correlation. Generally speaking, the more papers published by a high-level and influential journal, the higher its academic level and influence; On the other hand, most of the papers published by influential academic journals are of high level and easy to have great influence. However, it must be pointed out that not every paper published in an influential academic journal has a high level or great influence, not to mention that a paper published in an academic journal with little influence will not have a high level or academic influence. At present, in many universities and scientific research institutions in China, it is widely practiced to evaluate the level of academic papers by periodical grade. It is believed that the papers published in the so-called authoritative or core journals are all high-level, which can be rewarded by the unit and recognized in the evaluation, examination and employment of professional titles, while the papers published in general journals are often not recognized, which is a misunderstanding caused by the difference between the level and influence of academic journals and academic papers. This kind of understanding and evaluation system is worth studying and improving.
2. Influence factors (or cited rate) and the influence of academic journals.
There are often many factors that determine the nature of a thing. The influence factor (or citation rate) is indeed an important factor that can determine the influence of academic journals relatively objectively, but it is not the only factor. As mentioned above, if the influence of academic journals is mainly evaluated by impact factors, there may be great deviation due to the different disciplines and majors involved in journals and the different nature and types of journals. For example, the differences between humanities and social sciences, research on practical problems and ancient problems, research on basic theory and research on applied development, and the differences in nature and types between comprehensive journals and professional journals lead to the lack of comparability in evaluation, which leads to unfair evaluation results. Generally speaking, from the perspective of discipline, the citation rate and influencing factors of social sciences are higher than those of humanities; From the research object, the citation rate and influence factors of practical problems and basic theoretical problems are higher than those of ancient problems and application development problems; Judging from the nature and types of journals, the citation rate and influencing factors of professional journals are higher than those of comprehensive journals. The influence of academic journals itself is a very complicated phenomenon, involving many factors. Therefore, in the actual operation, we should pay special attention to avoid the simplification of methods and indicators.
3. The influence of core journals and academic journals
The concept of core journals comes from abroad. Bradford believes that for a certain subject or topic, a large number of research papers of the subject or topic are distributed in a few journals, while a few other papers of the subject or topic are distributed in a large number of journals; He compared the structure of the comet to a core periodical, and compared a few periodicals that published a large number of papers in a certain subject or topic to the core part of wisdom, thus proposing that there is a core area in the periodical. The original concept of Brinell core area
It only involves the distribution of papers, not the evaluation of periodicals. Garfield began the selection of core journals in 1970s, from which it was concluded that core journals have the function of evaluating journals. The establishment of the evaluation system of academic journals in China began with the research of core journals. In the early 1990s, the outline of Chinese core periodicals developed by Peking University Library was published internally. Since then, the Document Information Center of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences has developed and published the Outline of Core Journals of Humanities and Social Sciences in China, and the China Social Sciences Evaluation and Research Center of Nanjing University has developed the source periodical database of China Social Sciences Citation Index (CSSCI). With regard to the purpose or guiding ideology of selecting core journals, the Outline of China Humanities and Social Sciences Core Journals (2008 Edition) points out that "the core journals of a certain discipline (or a certain field) refer to journals that have published more papers in this discipline (or this field), have higher utilization rate (including citation rate, abstract rate and circulation rate) and have greater academic influence". China Social Science Citation Index (CSSCI) points out: "Candidate journals are important academic journals with high level, great social influence, standardized editing and publishing, and can reflect the latest level of various disciplines in the social science field". "Overview of China Core Journals (2008 Edition)" points out: "A core journal of a certain discipline refers to a journal that publishes a large number of papers in this discipline, has a relatively high abstract rate, citation rate and reader utilization rate, and has a high academic level and great influence in this discipline." It can be seen that the main purpose of selecting and evaluating core journals (or source journals similar to core journals) is to reflect and evaluate the influence of academic journals. To evaluate the influence of academic journals, we should attach great importance to the core journals selected by various evaluation institutions as an important reference. However, as mentioned above, there are still obvious deviations in the selection criteria and evaluation indicators of core journals in China, which deserve further study and improvement. It can be said that the academic and periodical circles have basically reached a * * * understanding. Although it is acknowledged that most of the existing core journals are of high quality and have great academic influence, the evaluation of the influence of academic journals is a broader academic evaluation activity, including both core journals and a large number of non-core journals, and each academic journal has the problem of influence evaluation. On the basis of constantly summing up and absorbing the beneficial experiences and practices in the development of core journals, it is an important task for scholars in the academic and periodical circles to formulate a more scientific, reasonable, fair and universal evaluation standard and index system for the influence of academic journals through in-depth research and discussion.
4. The mode of communication and the influence of academic journals
The influence of academic journals is closely related to the communication mode of academic journals, which involves two issues: First, the language and communication channels of journals affect the influence of academic journals. As an academic journal, its internal academic level and value can basically be judged after the manuscript is determined, but the influence of the journal is closely related to the language and communication mode of the text besides its internal academic level and value. A very obvious fact is that in China, the dissemination effect of Chinese periodicals is different from that of minority periodicals; Internationally, the dissemination effect of English periodicals and Chinese periodicals is definitely different; The communication effect of paper periodicals in the traditional media era is very different from that of online periodicals in the new communication context, which also determines its influence. Second, the time lag of communication also affects the influence of academic journals. For example, compared with bimonthly and quarterly journals, academic monthly journals may have greater influence. In recent years, academic journals at home and abroad are trying to give priority to the development of digital publishing of academic journals, which will have a revolutionary impact on accelerating the spread of academic journals and improving their influence. According to the statistical analysis of relevant experts, the citation peak of a paper is from the second year to the fourth year. If the publication time of journal papers is advanced by 1-2 years, it will have an important impact on improving the citation rate and academic influence of the papers.
5. Quantitative evaluation methods and qualitative evaluation methods
In recent years, academic circles and periodical circles have discussed the evaluation methods of the quality or influence of academic journals many times, but there are still great differences of opinion. One view is that the quantitative evaluation method is objective and fair, which is a great progress and a scientific and advanced method compared with the previous qualitative evaluation method. On the other hand, the current quantitative evaluation methods only pay attention to some cold statistical data, ignoring the role of peer experts in evaluation, making evaluation experts become calculators. According to the author's practice of running journals for many years, it is neither desirable nor possible to bypass quantitative methods in the evaluation of academic journals. We can imagine that if there are no statistical data on citation rate, extraction rate, award-winning rate, high-impact paper rate, journal award-winning, core journals included, print distribution and network communication, and they are counted, analyzed and ranked according to a certain weight, only dozens or even hundreds of journals will be judged by several peer experts. Not only is this evaluation impossible, but it is also likely that everyone's opinions will be difficult to unify in the evaluation. It must be pointed out that the quantitative data seems to be completely objective. In fact, the generation of these data reflects and condenses the subjective evaluation of many experts and scholars in the same field. No matter citation, reprinting, award-winning, core journal selection, subscription, visit, download and social evaluation, which one can be separated from the selection and evaluation of experts and scholars in the same field? We believe that the evaluation of the quality and influence of academic journals should not only abandon the quantitative evaluation method, but also take the relevant objective, accurate and scientific quantitative statistics, comprehensive analysis and ranking as an important basis, and then make qualitative evaluation on this basis and premise, and adhere to the mature method of combining quantitative and qualitative formed by years of practice at home and abroad.
The evaluation of the influence of academic journals involves not only the construction of evaluation criteria and index system, but also the evaluation principles, methods and procedures, as well as the evaluation of the international influence of academic journals. Limited by space, this article will not go into details. I hope more colleagues will pay attention to and participate in the discussion of this issue, and promote the continuous deepening of this research.