The Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI) is a national scientific citation database created in 2005. The project allows scientists to find out their citation index in the academic field. To search for information and upload materials to the database, scientists and scientific organizations need to register and master the portal of the Scientific Electronic Library ELIBRARY.ru.
The Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI) is a national database of scientific periodicals published by Russian scientists. The RSCI was introduced in 2005, and the ScienceIndex toolkit was created to obtain information on the citation of a particular material or publication data. The project is being developed by the Scientific Electronic Library ELIBRARY.ru (NEB).
At present, the information and analytical system of the RSCI has accumulated over 12 million articles by Russian scientists and information on more than 60,000 scientific journals.
Unlike such well-known databases as Scopus or Web Science, the RSCI is a non-profit project that has remained in the public domain since its inception, all bibliometric indicators can be obtained absolutely free of charge.
Features of working with RSCI: search instructions
To search for an article by author, you need to go to the elibrary page and type in the desired surname in the search box. The site also has an advanced search for publications: by selecting this option under the search box, the user is taken to a new page with a search form, in which you can select the type of publication, topic, publication years, various parameters for journals, and also specify where to search (including or another source, in keywords, etc.).
There is also a search in the catalog of journals, the author's index, the list of organizations and the thematic heading, where the heading represents a particular science or its section.
The user can save the current query, rename the saved queries, and delete them.
The full texts of publications in the RSCI can be viewed only after creating an account on the elibrary.ru portal. This applies to absolutely all materials, including those that are in the public domain.
How do I find my citation index?
The list of key citation indicators in the RSCI database includes:
· The total number of the author's publications in the RSCI;
· The total number of citations by the author;
· Average number of citations per publication;
· Hirsch index (h-index).
To find out your RSCI citation index, you need to go to the main page of the site elibrary.rum, select the section "Author's Index" and enter your full name. Registration is not required for this! The results will be highlighted under the search box: parameter "Publ." means the number of publications in the RSCI database, and "Cit." - the total number of citations. To analyze the publication activity, you should click on the colored histogram - it will open the extended data. Please note: if your article was published in a journal that is not included in the RSCI database, then the publication will not be included in it!
The situation with citations is a little more complicated, since there are two indicators. The number of citations of publications in the RSCI takes into account excerpts only from works uploaded to the database. But the total number of citations of the author reflects how many times any publications were cited, including conference proceedings, monographs, etc.
The Hirsch index is a scientometric indicator proposed in 2005 by the American scientist Jorge Hirsch in 2005. He not only counts the number of citations of all works, but also takes into account their "share", that is, highlights the most popular publications. The H-index is calculated as follows:
· The number of links to each article of the author is counted, the index h is assigned to it;
· Articles are ranked from highest to lowest citations;
· In the resulting table, you need to select an article whose number is equal to the number of links to it - this will be the Hirsch index.
Application of RSCI data to assess scientific activity
RSCI acts as one of the main sources of information for assessing the effectiveness of organizations engaged in research work. In particular, the Hirsch index plays a significant role in the award of scientific titles or the allocation of a grant.
Does the approximate h-index for obtaining a particular title in Russia look like this?
· Postgraduate student - 0-2;
· Candidate of Science - 3-6;
· Doctor of Science - 7-10;
· Member of the Dissertation Council - 10-15;
· World renowned researcher - 16 and above.
To increase the Hirsch index, experts recommend carefully monitoring the design of bibliographic lists, exchanging links with colleagues, publishing more author's articles, choosing famous scientists with high scores as co-authors for joint work, and finally, publishing in English-language publications (such as Scopus, Web of Science).
How to post scientific journals?
According to the information presented on the website elibrary.ru, the RSCI database aggregates information about all Russian scientific, technical and medical journals. The current regulation establishing the rules for the inclusion of scientific journals in the RSCI was published in 2008.
1. To include a scientific journal in the RSCI, the publishing house must send an application completed in any form and a questionnaire to the NEB e-mail.
2. Within five days, in response, the publishing house receives a draft Sublicense Agreement for the inclusion of the journal in the RSCI.
3. Having filled in the fields of the agreement, the publishing house must send two hard copies with the seal and signature of the head to the mailing address of the NEB.
4. Only after receiving and signing the sublicense agreement, the NEB returns one copy to the publishing house.
Important: if the representative of the publishing house is not registered on the website elibrary.ru, he or she needs to go through the procedure and register as a user.
To include a journal in the RSCI, each article published in it must have the following data:
· Information about authors;
· Title of the article in Russian and English;
· Abstract in Russian and English;
· Key words and phrases in Russian and English (separated from each other by semicolons);
· Subject heading (UDC code and / or VAK code and / or GRNTI);
· List of literature, drawn up in accordance with GOST 7.0.5-2008 "Bibliographic reference".
Details can be found in the annexes to the Regulations on the official website elibrary.ru.
How to post a non-periodical publication?
Copyright holders can also upload collections of articles, monographs, dissertations, etc. to the RSCI absolutely free of charge. They can be placed in two ways: in the form of metadata (that is, without full texts, but they will be provided for data verification) or with full texts of publications. Access to texts can be free or paid. The NEB accepts only those publications that have been published in official publishing houses and have undergone scientific review.
Russian Science Citation Index
In 2014, a project was launched to identify the so-called RSCI core - the best Russian scientific journals should be selected for it, capable of representing Russian science on the Web of Science international platform. They should be included in the first quartile of the RSCI based on the results of the bibliometric assessment. The project was named Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI). Since 2018, the publications have received the right to independently apply for inclusion in the top. At the same time, in parallel, work began to screen out journals that violate academic ethics (such as: lack of peer review, contractual or incorrect citation, etc.).
There are currently 771 journals in the RSCI database. It is noteworthy that about half of the views of the materials in this database are accounted for by foreign users outside the countries of the former USSR.
