Indian gatekeepers of foreign journals: A preliminary analysis

Abstract

In recent years, efforts have been made to quantify and measure various aspects of performance of a country by measuring both the quantity and quality of research. Recently, a new science indicator has been introduced of named as the "gatekeepers" or "members of editorial boards" to investigate the scientifi c/technological contribution of a country. The editorial boards of scientifi c journals play a crucial role in science by helping to guarantee the quality and relevance of the research eventually published. Besides, it can be assumed the presence on an editorial board of persons of a given nationality can infl uence the scientifi c output of their country, which could be made more visible. Until date, little explicit attention has been given to editorial board memberships of Indians despite such appointments being generally regarded as representing evidence of signifi cant scholarship and research achievement by individual academics. The objective of this research is to contribute data on patterns of editorial board membership of Indian academics and journals. Specifi cally, we examine the composition and concentration of individuals on editorial boards in academic journals with high rankings. The study contributes to the best of our knowledge of Indian contribution in infl uencing the research at international level by means of gate-keeping.

The relationship between SCI editorial board representation and university research output in the field of computer science: A quantile regression approach

“…In the early 1980s, Zsindely, Schubert and Braun (1982) used the number of editorial board members possessed by a country as an evaluation indicator to rank various countries, and examined the correlation between the number of editorial board members from particular countries and the number of articles produced by those countries (the two variables) in eight science disciplines, finding a significant correlation between the two variables. Similar results have been reported by Braun and Dióspatonyi (2005a, 2005b, 2005c, García-Carpintero, Granadino and Plaza (2010), Frey and Rost (2010), and Kumar and Srivastava (2013), who updated Zsindely et al's data sample and expanded the empirical discipline for the new millennium.…”