Economic journals in the optics of scientometrics

The paper discusses the ranking of journals based on the alternative to Scientometrics, where the basic unit of information is not the citation rate of publications, but their qualitative characteristics, obtained on the basis of the regular sociological survey of the economists' community conducted by the "Journal of NEA" in 2020. The empirical data obtained made it possible to determine the size of the audience of each journal. The paper shows that the size of the journals' readership has a direct impact on the respondents' assessments of the quality of publications and scientific authority of the journals. The ranking of economics journals by each particular criterion - "Interest in Journal Publications", "Scientific Level of Journals" and "Public Prestige of Journals" is presented. Use of the "Multiway data analysis" methodology has provided measurement not only of particular criteria that reflect hidden relations between their characteristics, but also determined the weight function of their aggregation in the aggregate ranking of journals - the "Ranking-2020". The article also contains a comparative analysis of ranking the journals on the basis of the "Rating-2020" and re-rating of the RSCI and criticizes RSCI criteria "Science Index" and "Public Examination".