Content-based citation analysis seeks to capture the meaning and functions of citations but continues to face unresolved methodological challenges. This study analyzes a stratified sample of Library and Information Science publications to examine how citance segmentation and annotator expertise influence the consistency of classification. Using two annotators with different professional backgrounds, the findings show that agreement is high when citances are defined identically, but reliability decreases sharply once text boundaries diverge. Citance length, rather than subject category or citation density, emerges as the strongest predictor of disagreement. These results identify segmentation as a methodological rather than a purely technical issue, shaping both human and automated tagging outcomes. By highlighting the interplay between expertise effects and boundary definitions, the study underscores the need for clearer operational frameworks in citation analysis. The contribution lies in demonstrating that methodological refinements in citance identification are essential for improving reproducibility, enhancing hybrid human-machine approaches, and strengthening the validity of citation-based indicators in research evaluation.

So-called ‘predatory’ publishing is often framed as an issue of unethical journal practices, but this perspective overlooks deeper structural problems in scholarly communication. The reliance on blacklists as a primary solution to identifying questionable journals fails to acknowledge the complexity of academic publishing and the broader systemic issues that contribute to unethical or controversial publishing practices. These include not only so-called ‘predatory’ journals but also concerns such as ‘special issue-ization’ and the rise of paper mills. Furthermore, the strategies used by emerging open-access mega-publishers increasingly resemble those employed by traditional and hybrid publishers, demonstrating that questionable practices are not confined to a single category of journals. This research in progress critically examines the characteristics of journals labeled as so-called ‘predatory’ and questions the effectiveness of static blacklists in scholarly assessment. Using a dataset of 2,755 journals from Predatory Reports, we systematically analyze their ISSN registration, subject classifications, accessibility, financial models, editorial transparency, and indexing status. While we recognize the limitations of blacklists, this dataset provides a basis for exploring broader patterns in academic publishing. Preliminary findings reveal that 24% of the journals became inaccessible after being listed, suggesting that some publishers shut down or rebrand to evade scrutiny. While ISSN registration is not mandatory, 13% of the journals in the dataset do not have one, which may indicate variations in registration practices. The geographical distribution of these journals is concentrated in India (31.45%), Switzerland (30.17%), and the United States (21.36%). This distribution highlights the global nature of these practices, spanning a range of publication models. The study also finds that 71% of these journals charge Article Processing Charges (APCs), while 23.7% fail to disclose APCs before submission, creating financial uncertainty for authors. Rather than indiscriminately covering all fields, many journals now focus on STEM disciplines. These findings underscore the need for more nuanced, criteria-based evaluation frameworks that account for the complexities of scholarly publishing, moving beyond binary categorizations of journals as ‘predatory’ or legitimate.

Purpose This study investigates the diversity of national scholarly journal publishing ecosystems in seven countries across Europe and Latin America: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Finland, Mexico, Poland, and T & uuml;rkiye. It challenges the common perception that global scholarly publishing is dominated by international commercial publishers by examining national publishing structures beyond English speaking contexts.Design/methodology/approach Using ISSN Centre data and national sources, we analyse journal-level publishing structures rather than article- or citation-level outputs. Publishers were categorized according to their institutional and organizational characteristics. The analysis focuses on active journals, defined as those with a recorded start year and no identified termination date. Journal coverage in Web of Science, Scopus, and OpenAlex was examined to assess how national publishing landscapes are represented in major bibliometric databases.Findings Educational institutions emerge as the primary publishers in most countries, representing more than 75 % of journals in Colombia and Brazil and more than 50 % in Mexico, Argentina, and Poland. Finland stands out, with scientific and professional associations leading journal publication at 62 %. Commercial publishers hold comparatively small shares, reaching their highest levels in T & uuml;rkiye at 12.1 % and Poland at 8.2 %. In terms of database representation, OpenAlex indexes over half of the journals in most countries, whereas Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus cover only a small portion.Research limitations The study relies on ISSN and national datasets, which differ in completeness and standardization. Variations in national reporting practices and database indexing policies may influence coverage comparisons. As the analysis is based on currently active journals, historical trends reflect surviving journals only.Practical implications The results provide evidence for policymakers, database providers, and research evaluators to recognize the diversity of national publishing systems. They highlight the importance of improving data sources and analytical approaches to ensure more accurate assessment of scholarly communication outside heavily commercialized environments.Originality/value The study offers a comparative analysis of national journal publishing ecosystems across seven countries, revealing structural differences that challenge the assumption of a globally uniform publishing model. It underscores the need for bibliometric research frameworks that include and accurately represent national and regional publishing structures.

University journals (UJs) are often described as local or inward-looking, although national and institutional embeddedness are rarely distinguished. This study examines the internationally indexed segment of university journals, analysing Web of Science-indexed titles from seven countries with contrasting publishing traditions and evaluation regimes (Argentina, China, Germany, South Africa, Türkiye, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom), based on publications from 2022-2024. National anchoring (N-Anch) measures the share of papers with at least one author from the journal’s home country, while institutional anchoring (I-Anch) captures participation by authors from the publishing university. The results reveal a clear divergence between these dimensions. National anchoring is high in Türkiye, China, Ukraine, South Africa, and Argentina, but considerably lower in Germany and UK university-press journals. Institutional anchoring remains low across all countries. Thus, strong integration into a national research community does not imply institutional anchoring. The findings show that patterns of national and institutional anchoring vary substantially across countries with different research, evaluation, and publishing systems and cannot be explained by university ownership alone.

Universities have been an instrumental part of the scholarly publishing landscape dating back several centuries, but comprehensive mapping of the presence of universities' involvement in publishing of journals is lacking. Using Ulrichsweb as the primary source and complementing it with data from Scopus, Web of Science, DOAJ and OpenAlex, we compiled a dataset of 19,414 active, peer-reviewed university journals from 148 countries using a multilingual identification method. The results reveal significant disparities in coverage: nearly three-quarters of the journals are indexed in OpenAlex, almost half in DOAJ, fewer than a quarter in Scopus, and fewer than a fifth on the Web of Science Core Collection. From a global perspective, university journals are heavily clustered to a few countries, notably the United States, Indonesia and Brazil. University journals are characterized by strong linguistic diversity, with more than a third publishing exclusively in non-English languages. The social sciences and humanities dominate the disciplinary profile. This study establishes a baseline for further research into bibliodiversity, equity and the role of universities in scholarly communication.

Although the organisational aspects of scholarly journals—such as the types of organisations responsible for publishing individual journals, whether independently or in collaboration—have significant implications for scholarly communication, they have received little focused research attention on a large scale. This study provides a comprehensive analysis of all WoS-indexed journals (N=21,886), focusing on the type of organisations that are officially attached to publishing the journals, either alone or together. We also investigate the disciplinary, geographical and linguistic diversity, and the key bibliometric characteristics, of journals (co)published by different types of organisations. By augmenting WoS metadata with a custom classification concerning organisational information about the journals publishing and governing organisations available through the International ISSN Centre, this study provides a larger and more detailed analysis than has been available so far. Our results show that 66% of journals are published by a sole organisation type (professional, research organisation, society), and 34% respectively are published through combinations of these different organisation types. The most common form of collaboration was a professional publisher with a scholarly society as the collaborative organisation.

This study examines how policy reforms in Turkiye’s national research funding system, particularly those implemented by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkiye (TUBITAK), have shaped scientific productivity between 1980 and 2023. Drawing on bibliometric data, policy documents, and time-series analysis, the research evaluates the impact of TUBITAK funding on publication counts, citation performance, and open access trends. Results indicate that the 2005 reform served as a turning point, triggering measurable increases in research output and visibility. However, this momentum was not sustained after 2015, suggesting a need for more inclusive, internationally oriented, and open science-aligned funding strategies. The study offers new insights into the longitudinal effects of national research policy on scientific outcomes and highlights the importance of policy design in maximizing the impact of public research investment.

This study explores ways of identifying learned societies within the Research Organization Registry (ROR), a type of organization that so far lacks its own category within the registry. Despite their significant role in the academic landscape, learned societies lack distinct recognition in global databases, which lowers their visibility and perceived impact. Using enhanced ISSN data and the existing ROR database, we present a methodology to identify learned societies based on their publishing activities and organizational names. Our approach is validated against national lists of societies from Austria, Finland, and the UK, demonstrating the feasibility and reliability of our method which, however, has several limitations discussed in the paper. Our findings show that 92% of 1,471 societies identified in ROR are currently assigned to ‘Other’ and ‘Nonprofit’ categories. We also highlight the geographical distribution and field-specific categorization of learned societies, emphasizing the diversity and scope of their influence. This paper contributes to the science of science field by proposing a framework that enhances the visibility and recognition of learned societies globally. Our research argues that ROR should consider enhancing their data schema to accommodate for learned societies. This way ROR can provide an open research information resource for identifying learned societies both for research and practical purposes.

Global scholarly publishing is often described as being dominated by international commercial publishers, particularly those indexed in Web of Science and Scopus. However, this perspective overlooks the diversity of journal ecosystems, especially in non-English-speaking countries. This study examines scholarly journal publishing in seven countries across Europe and Latin America – Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Finland, Mexico, Poland, and Turkey – using ISSN Center data and national sources. We categorize publishers according to their institutional and organizational characteristics and assess their coverage in WoS, Scopus, and OpenAlex. Our findings show that educational institutions are the dominant publishers in most countries, accounting for over 75% of journals in Colombia and Brazil and over 50% in Mexico, Argentina, and Poland. Finland is an exception, where scientific and professional associations lead (62.0%). Commercial publishers play a minor role, with their highest shares in Turkey (12.1%) and Poland (8.2%). Regarding database coverage, OpenAlex indexes over 50% of journals in most of the covered countries, while WoS and Scopus index only a small fraction. These results challenge the assumption of a globally uniform publishing system and highlight the need for bibliometric research to consider ways to improve the use of data sources and analysis methodologies so that national publishing structures are also included.

AbstractThis review examines the role of open citations in fostering transparency, reproducibility, and accessibility in scholarly communication. Through a critical synthesis of diverse sources—articles, proceedings, presentations, datasets, and blog posts—it explores the motivations behind citing, the evolving meanings of citations, and key milestones in the open citation movement. Particular attention is given to initiatives like OpenCitations and the Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC), highlighting their contributions to advancing open scholarship. Key findings indicate that open citations democratize research by providing free access to citation data, improving discoverability, and facilitating the creation of public citation graphs. Technological advancements, such as advanced data models and reference mining tools, have significantly contributed to the management and utilization of citation data. Despite these benefits, challenges such as ensuring data quality and standardization, addressing structural inequalities in citation networks, and achieving universal publisher adoption persist. The study concludes with recommendations for future efforts, emphasizing policy advocacy, technological innovation, global collaboration, and educational initiatives to promote the widespread adoption and effective use of open citations. These strategies aim to make the “frozen footprints” of scholarly communication accessible to all, fostering a more equitable and transparent scientific landscape.

The competitive nature of academia has led to the establishment of rigorous criteria by decision-makers for evaluating researchers’ performances. Title and tenure systems have been implemented based on these specific criteria. This study aims to examine how these criteria are fulfilled, identify which groups of researchers are required to meet these performance indicators, and assess the extent to which they do so. Data were collected from 98 academics in the field of library and information science via the Web of Science and the main academic platform of the Council of Higher Education, Turkey. A total of 1641 articles and 999 books or book chapters were subjected to analysis. The findings suggest that early-career researchers are disproportionately compelled to adhere to the “publish or perish” paradigm and are expected to meet higher performance expectations. When normalized for years of experience, the results indicate that professors exhibit the lowest publication output, while faculty members with a Ph.D. who hold the title of Associate Professor demonstrate the highest output. While this study primarily focuses on comparing the fulfillment of criteria between decision-makers and early-career researchers, future research will explore the observed inflation in book and book chapter publications within the same field.

Open citations play a vital role in enhancing the transparency, reproducibility, and accessibility of scholarly research. This systematic review examines the evolution, impact, and future prospects of open citations through a detailed analysis of literature, including articles, proceedings, presentations, datasets and blog posts. The study explores the motivations behind citing, the changing meanings of citations, and highlights key milestones in the open citation movement, particularly focusing on initiatives like OpenCitations and the Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC).Key findings indicate that open citations democratize research by providing free access to citation data, improving discoverability, and facilitating the creation of public citation graphs. Technological advancements, such as advanced data models and reference mining tools, have significantly contributed to the management and utilization of citation data. Despite these benefits, challenges such as ensuring data quality and standardization, addressing structural inequalities in citation networks, and achieving universal publisher adoption persist.The study concludes with recommendations for future efforts, emphasizing policy advocacy, technological innovation, global collaboration, and educational initiatives to promote the widespread adoption and effective use of open citations. These strategies aim to make the “frozen footprints” of scholarly communication accessible to all, fostering a more equitable and transparent scientific landscape.

The proliferation of questionable publishing practices has raised serious concerns in academia, prompting numerous discussions and investigations into the motivations behind researchers’ preference for such journals. In this study, we aimed to explore the impact of current academic performance evaluation systems on scholars’ questionable journal preferences in Turkey. Utilizing data from the comprehensive study conducted by Kulczycki et al. (2021) on questionable journals, we analyzed the academic careers of 398 researchers who authored 417 articles in this context. Our findings reveal a clear association between current research evaluation systems and journal selection, particularly during the process of applying for associate professorship. Notably, 96% of the articles published in questionable journals were listed in scholars’ academic profiles, indicating their use in academic promotion or incentive portfolios. While this study contributes valuable insights into the relationship between academic performance evaluation systems and questionable journal preferences, additional research is required to comprehensively understand the motivations behind scholars’ publishing choices and to devise effective strategies to combat questionable publishing practices in academia.

This article aims to investigate the structures of 935 conferences organised by OMICS and 296 conferences organised by WASET from 2015 through 2017. These conferences are characterised in existing literature as so-called predatory or questionable conferences that provide low-quality academic meetings. We analyse 40,224 presenters, focusing on top-ranked institutions according to three global university ranking systems (Academic Ranking of World Universities, Times Higher Education World University Rankings, and QS World University Rankings). Our analysis shows that participants in OMICS events were primarily researchers from the United States, India, the United Kingdom, and China. WASET attracted more researchers from Turkey, India, and South Korea. We found that 11.0% of OMICS and 5.7% of WASET presenters were affiliated with institutions ranked in the top 100 in one of the three aforementioned rankings. We also found that both companies mostly organised conferences in cities that were top tourist destinations.

The importance of open citation data is increasing to ensure transparency and sustainability in scientific research. Open citations refer to the bibliographic information of scientific publications being machine-readable, independently accessible from the main source, and usable without any restrictions. This approach enhances reproducibility in scientific studies, improves information retrieval processes, and enables the production of new information services. The OpenCitations initiative, which began in 2010, facilitates the publication of open citation data using semantic web technologies, while I4OC (Initiative for Open Citations) promotes the widespread adoption of open citations. In Turkiye, platforms such as DergiPark and TR Dizin support open citation practices, thereby increasing the visibility of scientific publications both nationally and internationally. This opinion piece discusses the preliminary findings of the project titled "Sustainable Open Citation Data for Turkish Scientific Literature", hosted by TUB & Idot;TAK ULAKB & Idot;M and supported within the framework of the T & Uuml;B & Idot;TAK 2218 Domestic Postdoctoral Research Scholarship Program. It emphasizes the importance of open citations for sustainable scholarly communication.

Academic conferences are incredibly valuable opportunities for researchers. They offer a chance to share research and preliminary findings, receive feedback, and improve an ongoing work. Regrettably, the ability for researchers from many countries to attend academic conferences is increasingly becoming a challenge due to the resulting economic hardships that the Covid-19 pandemic (among other factors) has caused. These issues, which are being felt globally, have had an especially significant impact on (semi)peripheral regions.

This study uses content-based citation analysis to move beyond the simplified classification of predatory journals. We present that, when we analyze papers not only in terms of the quantity of their citations but also the content of these citations, we are able to show the various roles played by papers published in journals accused of being predatory. To accomplish this, we analyzed the content of 9,995 citances (i.e., citation sentences) from 6,706 papers indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection, which cites papers published in so-called "predatory" (or questionable) journals. The analysis revealed that the vast majority of such citances are neutral (97.3%), and negative citations of articles published in the analyzed journals are almost completely nonexistent (0.8%). Moreover, the analysis revealed that the most frequently mentioned countries in the citances are India, Pakistan, and Iran, with mentions of Western countries being rare. This highlights a geopolitical bias and shows the usefulness of looking at such journals as mislocated centers of scholarly communication. The analyzed journals provide regional data prevalent for mainstream scholarly discussions, and the idea of predatory publishing hides geopolitical inequalities in global scholarly publishing. Our findings also contribute to the further development of content-based citation analysis.

Scientific conferences are essential venues where researchers present their preliminary research findings, establish new networks, and lay the groundwork for future collaborations. Geopolitical inequalities, however, overlaps with inequalities in academia and have effects on conference participation. These conferences, which are easily accessible for central countries and researchers from these countries, are often unaffordable for researchers from peripheral countries. The main aim of this study is to determine from which country researchers have an advantage in participating in scientific conferences. In this context, the iConference2023 to be held in Barcelona was taken as an example, and participation fees, accommodation, and transportation expenses were compared with the GDP per capita of 218 countries. Visa requirements were also evaluated. As a result of the research, while researchers from central countries with high-income levels can participate in conferences with very little expenditure, unaffordable costs often arise for researchers from regions with low-income levels. For this reason, sharp measures should be taken to ensure equal access opportunities for researchers.

A discussion of the place of books in incentive and tenure systems.