[Possibilities of governmental quality support of scientific journals in Croatia]

Abstract

The measure of success for a scientific journal, which publishes original research, is its visibility in the international scientific community. The most comprehensive bibliographical database of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI, now Thomson ISI), Web of Science, indexes 13 out of 176 journals that received financial support from the Ministry of Science in 2003, and 7 of them are in the 9 divisions of the most selective ISI bibliographic database, Current Contents. Taking into account the specificities of the small scientific community, or the so-called scientific "periphery" to which Croatia belongs, we proposed a new system of financial support of scientific journals in Croatia. Such system would support all scientific journals fulfilling basic requirements of scholarly publishing, such as structure of the editorial board and office, editorial procedures and records. Indexing in professional and general bibliographic databases would be encouraged by additional financial support and continual control of the editorial work in the journals.