Ranking of Russian Economic Journals: The Scientific Method or "Numbers Game"?

This article is devoted to general problems of ranking on the example of critical analysis of the three ratings of Russian economic journals suggested in recent years, the methodology of construction of which are connected with the Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI) data, results of expert surveys and a combination of these approaches. The fundamental disadvantages of each of them are revealed and it is shown that the vulnerable points of such developments are relatively arbitrary choice of bibliometric indicators and their weak correlation with academic authority of journals, insufficiently substantiated procedure of aggregation of used indicators and/or expert analysis, as well as surveys of experts are not representative. This paper presents a "passive experiment", in terms of which were mapped the results of the ranking of journals, based on the three ratings and three additional criteria. Made the overall conclusion about the low level of development of such researches and the lack of real grounds for the application of these ratings in the practice of science management and motivation of scientists.