National Journals and Analysis of H-index of Editorial National Journals and Analysis of H-index of Editorial Board Members
Abstract
National journals are important means of fostering dialogue on the aims of individual fields. The members of the editorial boards of these journals can infl uence the codification of the standards of manuscripts published in the given field, and therefore they are referred to as gatekeepers, i.e. "choosing which content and form of scientific communication is acceptable".
We can use scientometric data to get at least a rough idea of the composition of editorial boards. Although similar analyses are common in foreign journals, we did not find such a study dealing with national journals.
Therefore, in a model set of Czech and Slovak journals in the field of pedagogy and didactics of biology, we searched the WOS database for the H-index of members of editorial boards and compared local and foreign members in terms of this criterion. We managed to find the H-index of most local and foreign members; the incompleteness of the data was caused by ambiguity in the interpretation and assignment of data available in the WOS database.
We showed statistically significant differences in the H-score (average H-index of members of editorial boards) between some journals. The Kruskal-Wallis test was used for this analysis.
Using the Mann-Whitney U test, we showed that the index of a journal in the Scopus database has no significant effect on the H-score of the journal. The contribution of foreign members of editorial boards to the H-score of the journal was, compared to the contribution of local members, significantly higher in only three journals; in the others the contribution of local and foreign members was balanced (Pearson's chi-square test).