https://doi.org/10.15255/KUI.2008.001
Published: Kem. Ind. 57 (3) (2008) 115–122
Paper reference number: KUI-01/2008
Paper type: Professional paper / From our Libraries
Download paper:  PDF

Analysis of the Financial Support by the Croatian Ministry of Science, Education and Sports to Croatian Scientific Journals

B. Macan and J. Stojanovski

Abstract

The Ministry of Science, Education and Sports (MSES) provides financial support for publishing scientific and scientific/professional journals . The journals should satisfy the following conditions: regular publishing, coherence with the “Notes for editing primary scientific publications”, inclusion in at least one international bibliographic database relevant for the specific scientific field, review procedure, existence of a web page with at least basic information about the journal and a table of contents of the latest issue. The MSES also provides financial help for publishing journals dedicated to promoting science, which is awarded by special decision of the Commission for publishing. 2 In the year 2007, the MSES financially supported 220 Croatian scientific, scientific/professional journals, and journals for the promotion of science from the fields of humanities, natural, technical, biotechnical, social, biomedical and health care sciences with 15 million Croatian kunas in total.5 More than 50 % of the supported journals are from humanities and social sciences, while only 20 of the titles (9 %) belong to biotechnical journals (Fig. 1). Distribution of financial support by scientific fields is similar (Fig. 2). The average financial support is HRK 68,181.82 per journal. The highest average amount per journal is given to journals from biomedical and health care sciences (HRK 83,758.42), while the lowest support is given to humanities journals (HRK 54,138.20) (Fig. 3). If we divide the amount of MSES financial support in 2007 into 5 classes, each class being HRK 50,000 , it is obvious that the majority of journals (122 titles or 55.45 %) was supported with less than HRK 50,000; about a quarter of the journals with an amount between HRK 50,000 and HRK 100,000; and 11 journals with more than HRK 200,000 (Fig. 4). In order to compare the criteria for scientific advancement (papers published in journals covered by Thomson Scientific databases is given higher scientific value) with the criteria needed for MSES financial support, coverage of Croatian scientific journals by the world–known databases (Current Contents, Web of Science and Journal Citation Report) was analyzed. The results have shown that only 5 out of 9 Croatian CC journals were supported with an amount higher than HRK 200,000. Twenty-six journals from the field of natural sciences were more closely analyzed. The productivity of those journals was estimated and the result showed that 16 scientific journals altogether published 411 scientific papers. Most of them were original scientific papers (88.1 %) and there were only 4 (less than 1 %) review articles (Fig. 6). The average financial support for publishing per article in the field of natural sciences was HRK 4,060.25. Publishing of scientific papers from the Geologia Croatica journal was supported with the highest average amount (HRK 8,885.00 ) while Central European Astrophysical Bulletin was supported with the lowest amount per article (HRK 584.55). Additional research was done for journals from the field of natural sciences, which included checking whether a journal had a web page and if it offered access to full-text articles. It was established that 96 % of the journals had web pages with at least the basic information about the journal and a table of contents of the current issue, while 64 % of the journals offered access to the full text of the published papers. If we compare these results with the results of a previous research,14 it is evident that the number of journals with access to the full text of the published articles is continuously growing (from 14 % in 2002 to 65 % at the beginning of 2008). If we focus only on journals that publish scientific papers, 93.7 % of them offer access to the full text through their own web pages or through the Hrčak, while only one journal (Periodicum Biologorum) lacks this option.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Keywords

scientific publishing, Croatia, financial support