Dynamics Between National Assessment Policy and Domestic Academic Journals

Introduction Normally research assessment methodologies assume that the highest scores should be given to articles published in recognised high impact journals. While these high impact journals are mostly published in the US and UK, lower citation rates are particular to journals published in other countries. Subsequent to expansion of the Web of Science in 2007–2009, the research platform was generously augmented with scientific journals issued by local publishers of non-English speaking countries (Leeuwen et al., 2001; van Raan, van Leeuwen, & Visser, 2011). Analysts agree that papers in national journals are usually less frequently cited in comparison to articles published in English (Haiqi & Yamazaki, 1998; Meneghini & Packer, 2007; Moed, 2002; Ponomariov & Toivanen, 2014; Russell, 1998; Tijssen et al., 2006). Research evaluations in several Eastern European countries largely build on data from Thomson Reuters and Elsevier databases. An overview provided by Dejan Pajić (Pajić, 2014) demonstrates that methodologies of most countries award papers in leading international journals rather than national ones. In some countries, articles published in national journals either receive a lower score or are given no score. The Lithuanian methodology is but an illustration of this. The way a journal reflects the internationalized nature of science may be determined by many methods, one of which is based on the distribution of authoring and citing countries (Zitt & Bassecoulard, 1998). The aim of the paper is to analyse the impact of the national assessment policy on the development of research journals published in the same country.