Pixel International Conferences

Social sciences are bound to the local cultural and historical context [1], local context embedding is symptomatic also for subject didactics. Domestic journals are often the main vehicle for disseminating relevant results of indigenous research activities dealing with issues or problems of predominantly or solely local relevance [2]. However, domestic journals do not only fulfill the need to disseminate scientific information at multiple levels but also contribute significantly to building the professional discourse on the national context. Given that, especially in non-Anglophone countries, they are rarely indexed in international or local databases [3], domestic research is thus somewhat separated from international ones, even in terms of the availability of scientometric indicators [4]. The aim of the study is to propose metrics that are based on publicly available data and do not require citation metrics (in this case unavailable) that are useable for evaluating local didactic journals. Based on a literature review and our suggestions we have compiled a set of indicators divided into four groups as follows – editorial board, website, indexing, and author guidelines. Preliminary testing on journals of didactics of biology and pedagogy from the Czech and Slovak Republic advise that the set of indicators we propose is capable of distinguishing the quality of journals, although its limits compared to citation metrics are obvious.

Keywords: didactic, journal, scientometry, national context, indicators.

References:

[1] López-Navarro, I., Moreno, A. I., Quintanilla, M. Á., & Rey-Rocha, J. (2015). Why do I publish research articles in English instead of my own language? Differences in Spanish researchers’ motivations across scientific domains. Scientometrics, 103(3), 939–976.
[2] Tijssen, R. J. W., Mouton, J., van Leeuwen, T. N., & Boshoff, N. (2006). How relevant are local scholarly journals in global science? A case study of South Africa. Research Evaluation, 15(3), 163–174. https://doi.org/10.3152/147154406781775904
[3] Pajić, D., Jevremov, T., & Škorić, M. (2019). Publication and Citation Patterns in the Social Sciences and Humanities: A National Perspective. Canadian Journal of Sociology, 44(1), 67–94.
[4] López Piñeiro, C., & Hicks, D. (2015). Reception of Spanish sociology by domestic and foreign audiences differs and has consequences for evaluation. Research Evaluation, 24(1), 78–89. https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvu030