A Comparative Study On Evaluation Validity Of Four Core Journal Catalogues

Core journals can not only be the reference that literature databases or library collection construction optimizing the source periodicals, but also can be used to evaluate paper’s quality and play a role in academic evaluation, mainly on degree-conferring of university, professional-title assessment and academic achievements. At present, there are several typical core journal directories in China, such as, A Guide of the Core Journal of China(hereinafter, the Directory of Peking University), Chinese Social Science Citation Index(hereinafter referred to as the Directory of Nanjing University), A Guide to the Humanities & Social Science Core Journals in China(hereinafter, the Directory of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) and Research Center for Chinese Science Evaluation(hereinafter, the Directory of Wuhan University). However, choosing proper core journal directory as reference has become an uphill task remained to be solved by the scientific researchers and institutions.In order to solve the problem, it is necessary to conduct a quantitative research on function of academic evaluation that core journal catalogue evaluate papers’ quality based on the journals’ quality. So, this paper puts forward a concept called the evaluation validity of core journal directory. Namely, verifying whether core journal included in the core journal catalogues is fully and effectively published a high-quality paper in a field, and counting the proportion and degree of high-quality papers. The basic idea of research is that taking a certain amount of papers in the science & technology management as samples. Then the papers are divided into five levels by using cited frequency of scientometrics indicators and another five levels by using peer-reviewed comprehensive index. At this point, paper’s level is the grade of corresponding journals. And counting the journals’ species that each level contained. Next, investigating the proportion of journals in the five levels divided by cited frequency that included in the four core journal catalogues. Finally, comparing the evaluation validity of the four core journal directories based on the proportion.The main conclusions are as follows:(1) The Directory of Peking University ranks the first place in the evaluation validity, closely followed by the Directory of Nanjing University.(2) The Directory of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences is higher than Wuhan University in evaluation validity ranking the third and fourth place, respectively.(3)The evaluation validity of Peking University and Nanjing University’s directory are far higher than the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Wuhan University’ s.The theoretical value of this paper can be concluded that it is the first time to propose a concept called evaluation validity of core journal catalogues. In addition, it provides a specific method to compare the evaluation validity of different core journal catalogues. In a certain extent, it can enrich the related theory to the research of core journals evaluation in China. The practical value of this paper is that the core journal directories of having the highest evaluation validity can directly provide reference for library collection purchasing or journals’ database construction, and guidance for the academic evaluation and scientific research management.