UDC 001:004.6
V. N. Kolodnytsky, Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences
SCIENTIFIC AND THEORETICAL JOURNAL “SUPERHARD MATERIALS” IN THE WORLD INFORMATION SPACE
The definition of information, knowledge and information and communication technologies as resources of the information society for solving practical problems of science and technology is given. The scientific and theoretical journal “Superhard Materials” is presented as an example of a source of scientific information. According to the information product “Journal Citation Reports” of the scientific citation database ISI Web of Knowledge of Thomson Reuters, the journal “Superhard Materials” received an impact factor of 0.547, which determines its leading place in the world information space.
Keywords: information space, scientific journal, databases, abstracting, impact factor, journal “Superhard Materials”.
The transition from an industrial to an information system in the world dictates the need to form an information society as one of the urgent problems of our time. The use of the opportunities of promising information and communication technologies in modern conditions is considered not as the development of a separate high-tech sector of the economy, but as an effective tool and mechanism for overcoming problems in many areas of society, including science. Despite the national specifics of each state and the state of the world community as a whole, the information society is developing rapidly, therefore it is important to realize its role and place in the new conditions, building a strategy for its own development, and to approach a systematic understanding of the ideology of these processes [1].
The fundamental resources of the information system are information, knowledge and information technologies. Their practical connection has a significant impact on solving the pressing problems of humanity. Information adequately reflects the phenomena and laws of the outside world, the spiritual activity of humanity, creates the possibility of predicting and transforming reality in the interests of the international community.
It has become a global value, that is, it has an international character. The information factor has created the most profound changes in the life of civilization – it has united the world into a single system that functions in real time. An economic breakthrough has occurred on the way to the transition from the production of goods to the production of information services.
Knowledge is inextricably linked with intellectual work. It is a form of existence and systematization of the results of human cognitive activity. It helps people rationally organize their activities and solve various problems that arise in its process. Knowledge is a set of information and rules for inferring about the world, the properties of objects, patterns of processes and phenomena, as well as rules for using them for decision-making. The main difference between knowledge and data is their structure and activity; the appearance of new facts in the database or the establishment of new connections can be a source of changes in decision-making. In addition to solving the problems of transferring, accessing, processing and storing information, it is necessary to give the highest priority to the processes of producing new knowledge. In industries based on knowledge, the increase in added value is on average 3%. Added value is created to a large extent by innovations, the creation and use of which requires a qualified workforce, as well as a certain corporate policy, the purpose of which is to cultivate the ability to perceive the new. Any company that wants to maintain its niche in the market is now simply obliged to monitor innovations emerging in its field of interest, since the emergence of one successful technology can radically change the rules of the game [2].
Information and communication technologies in modern conditions of development are not just a technical infrastructure associated with computerization, but also a global tool for the redistribution of ideas. It is thanks to information and communication technologies that the widespread dissemination of ideas of the scientific and technological revolution and the latest technologies became possible.
The symbiosis of information, knowledge and information and communication technologies allows for the practical use of the resources of the information society to solve practical problems of science and technology.
At all stages, the development of science as a universal phenomenon, successfully crossing state and national borders, was characteristic. However, only now has the existence of the world scientific community as a single organism become real, practically on a real scale of time, determined by the achievements of information technologies [3].
A scientific journal, a periodical [4], serves as a source of scientific information and a means of scientific communication.
There are three types of scientific journals. Primary scientific journals contain mainly new scientific results or a new understanding and discussion of known ideas and facts. Other scientific journals report mainly information about primary documents and are the result of scientific and informational and bibliographic activities; These are abstract journals and indexes to them, signal information, express information, bibliographic publications. Scientific journals of the third type (sometimes called third інными) set as their task the generalization of already published primary information; these are review, as well as scientific and methodological, some general scientific and popular scientific journals, etc. In the 30s of the last century, the scientific journal as a source of scientific information was criticized. Various projects were put forward to replace the scientific journal with other means of disseminating information, which were not implemented. The main reason for this is that the functions of a scientific journal are not limited to the dissemination of scientific information: the publication of an article ensures the priority of the scientist, due to references to previous works, continuity in science is achieved, and the international nature of science is realized in the availability for use of all world journal literature. A scientific journal contributes to the formation of scientific schools: when assessing scientific schools, the citation of the works of school participants in domestic and foreign publications is taken into account [5].
The primary scientific journal includes the scientific and theoretical journal “Superhard Materials”, which was founded in July 1979 at the V.M. Bakul Institute of Superhard Materials of the NAS of Ukraine, instead of the scientific and production collection “Synthetic Diamonds”, to highlight the results of fundamental and applied research related to the production, properties and application of superhard materials. The journal’s topics cover theoretical and experimental studies of the structure and properties of single and polycrystals of synthetic diamond and cubic boron nitride, refractory compounds, high-density ceramics and hard alloys, and their application in tool production. The journal presents modern results of fundamental research into the physicochemical processes of formation and growth of single-component, polycrystalline and dispersed substances, diamond and diamond-like films; development of methods for direct and directed controlled synthesis of superhard materials and methods for static, explosive and epitaxial synthesis of these materials. Its pages discuss priority developments of the V.M. Bakul Institute of Superhard Materials and other world scientific centers in the field of creating large single crystals of synthetic diamonds; polycrystals and composite superhard materials based on diamond and cubic boron nitride; diamond and hard alloy cutters for highly efficient metal processing, drilling, stone processing, coal mining and geological exploration; production of polishing pastes for high-precision optics, etc. The articles cover all fundamental and technological aspects of synthesis, studying the properties of superhard materials and their areas of application.
Articles and reports of specialists from research organizations and industrial enterprises on the effective use of superhard materials in various sectors of the national economy are also published: in mechanical and instrument-making, electronics, in the processing of glass, ceramics, plastics, wood, in the drilling of oil and gas wells, in geological exploration. The journal reports on international symposia, conferences, exhibitions; publishes reviews, bibliographic materials.
The authors of the journal are scientists and specialists from more than 100 leading research and educational centers in more than 20 countries of the world, including Belarus, Brazil, Great Britain, Germany, Greece, Israel, India, Poland, Russia, Serbia, USA, Ukraine, France, Czech Republic, Japan, etc.
Since 1983, the journal “Superhard Materials” has been republished in English under the title “Journal of Superhard Materials” by Allerton Press Inc. in the USA.
In 2007, the distribution of the journal “Journal of Superhard Materials” was launched through Springerlink (http://www.springerlink.com/content/1063-4576) – one of the world’s largest databases of scientific information.
Since 2008, according to the assessment of an authoritative expert committee, the journal “Journal of Superhard Materials” has been included in the scientific citation database Web of Science of Thomson Reuters (The Institute of Scientific Information / ISI) in Philadelphia, USA. The Web of Science databases are visited by more than 20 million users per year, which represents an average of 150,000 visits per day, and the collective users of Web of Science are more than 3,500 scientific institutions from 90 countries.
A scientist seeks to publish the results of his work, set out in the article, primarily with the aim of their widest dissemination. The main quantitative indicator of the interest of the scientific community in articles published in journals, their relevance, novelty, perfection and validity is currently the impact factor (citation index).
The American Institute for Scientific Information of Thomson Reuters is today recognized as the most advanced abstract-information institution in the field of statistical data processing in scientific periodicals. Methods for calculating the impact factor and evaluating scientific publications have been improved over a long period of time. The results of statistical processing of such data ISI sells on the world market, their buyers are mainly scientific institutions, publishing houses and libraries. It is this database that they manage This is done by placing orders for periodicals. Journal statistics are used to form a database of the citation index (Science Citation Index – SCI) of journals, which is summarized in the SCI report on the journal citation index (Journal Citation Report – JCR) [6].
The JCR provides a quantitative comparative assessment of the rating of journals based on the impact factor. The impact factor is a measure of the frequency with which an article in a journal and the journal itself are cited by other publications over a certain period of time. The impact factor of journals is determined by dividing the number of citations from journal articles in the current year by the number of articles published in this journal over the past two years:
Impact factor 2010 = A / B
where A is the number of citations in 2010 of articles published in the journal in 2008-2009; B – the total number of articles published in this journal in 2008-2009.
The impact factor determines the prestige of the journal for scientists. A scientific publication, in principle, cannot get into the world’s libraries without an established impact factor. The impact factor is determined by entering the publication into the ISI databases, in particular, into the so-called “Master Journal List”.