Six flagship scientometric journals from a bibliometric perspective

Abstract The present study offers a comprehensive bibliometric assessment of six flagship scientometric journals, namely, Scientometrics, Journal of Informetrics, Quantitative Science Studies, Journal of Information Science, Research Evaluation, and Publications, covering the 2014–2023 period. The examined journals were selected for their leading role in the distribution of scientometrics research as well as their thematic centrality, citation performance, and publisher diversity within the field. Our study aims to compare productivity and citation impact patterns, evaluate citation-based prestige metrics such as the Scimago Journal Rank (SJR) and Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI), and quantify country-level concentration of publication output and citation impact across the geography of contribution. Data were extracted using Scopus and SciVal, yielding metadata on 6,471 publications. We employed bibliometric methods to analyze the journals’ performance including statistical analyses of publication metrics, citation analysis as well as the examination of internationalization practices of these journals. Analyses revealed notable disparities in output volume and citation distribution, with evidence of the Matthew effect and citation inequality across journals. Scientometrics is the most productive journal in the set, the Journal of Informetrics and Quantitative Science Studies lead the elite citation indicators, and lower-ranked outlets, such as MDPI’s Publications, draw their visibility largely from a small number of high-impact publications. Country-level analysis shows that contribution to these journals is strongly concentrated. Across 110 contributing countries, the top ten account for roughly three-fifths of publications and two-thirds of citations (publication Gini = 0.766; citation Gini = 0.792). Per-journal analysis reveals that the gap between citation and publication concentration varies by more than an order of magnitude across journals, from + 0.005 (JIS) to + 0.148 (QSS), indicating that journals differ markedly in how they convert publication access into citation reward.