Greetings, dear colleagues! With you Vasily Malets — author of the "Scopus Delisting" column! We're continuing our series on journals that may soon lose their Scopus indexing. You appreciate our materials, submit journals for review, and express your gratitude, so I'm pleased to write the sixth installment of our series, "Scopus Delisting."
Our column is becoming useful for many Kazakh scientists, helping them save both money and time.
This time, we'll look at four journals that are on the verge of being excluded from Scopus, some of which have published quite a few Ukrainian scientists:
1. Pakistan Journal of Criminology
The first publication to be included in Scopus in 2023, immediately achieving a 2nd quartile position due to its high number of citations.
The journal has increased its publication count from 43 in 2022 to 107 in 2023, and to 222 in 2024, and the year is not over yet.
According to our internal sources, the magazine has entered the Radar system and is currently time verified by Scopus specialists.
Reasons:
📌 A sharp increase in self-citations.
📌 A significant increase in the number of posts.
Our specialists analyzed the journal's content, and all articles published in 2023–2024 are significantly inferior in quality to those published in 2021–2022, when the journal was first submitted to Scopus. The journal also offered expedited publication for a fee.
Conclusion: There is a 90% chance that the journal will be excluded from the Scopus database because it is under review, although this has not been officially announced. We predict that articles already indexed will not be removed, but future publications in the journal will no longer be indexed. We expect the journal to be excluded in December or January.
2. Edelweiss Applied Science and Technology
More than 200 Ukrainian scientists have recently published in this journal. We have been monitoring it since January 2024. The journal began actively sending out invitations to publish in a multidisciplinary Scopus journal, priced at $600. Initially, only high-quality articles were accepted, but starting in June–July 2024, it began accepting all submissions, raising the price to $700.
There is a high probability (100%) that all articles from this journal will be removed from the Scopus database by March 2025.
3. Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture
The third title on the list is currently indexed, but all articles from 2023–2025 have been removed from the database. The title received a 2nd quartile ranking and was registered in the United States. The publication cost was over 1200 dollars, and many scientists agreed to this proposal.
The journal published more than 800 articles in 2024, all of which have now been retracted.
According to Scopus's new policy, they do not include publications with removed articles in the official list, but the Academy of Articles will continue to monitor such journals.
4. Library Progress International
The journal, which was launched in 2024 and is focused on advancing research in library and information sciences, began publishing everything after being included in Scopus. Currently, more than 1200 articles low quality.
We expect this publication to be removed from the Scopus database by February 2025, with all articles being completely removed.
Thus, today we reviewed four publications that are at risk of being removed from Scopus. The first publication has no significant violations, so it's likely that the indexed articles will remain. As for the next three publications, it's highly likely that all indexed articles will be removed.
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