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TERRA ECONOMICUS

ACADEMIC PUBLISHING, JOURNAL RANKINGS, AND SCIENTIFIC PRODUCTIVITY

TERRA ECONOMICUS, , Vol. 15 (no. 4),

Academic publishing, rankings, and scientific productivity constitute an essential part of every researcher’s career. Publications in prestigious academic journals have a significant impact on the institutional rankings and help researchers to the grant funding. Nevertheless, the issue of «where» to publish became more important than «what» to publish. The academic race ignited the emotional discussion about the phenomenon of the so-called «predatory» journals that allegedly publish scientific «rubbish» for money without proper peer review. Czech Republic is one of the countries that seem to be particularly obsessed with the issue of «predatory» journals which led to a storm in the Czech academic teacup. Everyone in the Czech Republic (including the top management of the country’s leading universities and Academy of Sciences) was and is still publishing in the journals that were once considered “predatory” by Jeffrey Beall (i.e. journals published by MDPI or Hindawi). Many Czech academics get promoted based on publishing their monographs in obscure publishing houses located in apartment blocks or publishing papers in the journals they are editing bypassing the peer review (a famous “Tereza Stöckelová controversy”). According to some estimates, between 2009 and 2013 Czech universities made approximately $2 million on papers and monographs published in «predatory» publishing outlets. The case of «predatory» journals was used by some less-productive institutes of the Czech Academy of Sciences to question the system of world’s established academic metrics such as Scopus and Web of Science. However, moving away from the world-renowned databases and creating national publication standards would most certainly allow small groups of local academics to control the system of academic rankings and productivity. Academic database such as Scopus and Web of Science offer international and non-involved objectivity and therefore are fair and transparent.


Keywords: academic rankings, publishing, scientific productivity, bibliometrics, predatory journals, Scopus, Web of Science

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Publisher: Southern Federal University
Founder: Southern Federal University
ISSN: 2073-6606