The “Russian Hirsch”: Formal Attributes of Publications and Indicators of Their Visibility on eLibrary and PsyJournals as Predictors of the RSCI Citation Rate

The article investigates the predictors of citation rate in the Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI) for Russian publications in psychology. 4 groups of indicators are analyzed: formal attributes of a publication (total 12), parameters of publication visibility on eLibrary.ru (total 3) and PsyJournals.ru (total 2) that define accessibility of publication to potential readers, and author-based citation parameters (total 3). Special attention is paid to citation parameters as qualitative characteristics of the author’s method of elaborating the scientific text and construing dialogue (in the form of citations) with other researchers. Relationship between the indicators analyzed and the RSCI citation rate is proven statistically using the multivariate statistical methods. Recommendations are provided for authors to increase their citation rates. The sample is represented by 662 publications in 6 Russian psychology journals, each indexed in the RSCI, Web of Science, and Scopus