Academic journals play a crucial role in the propagation and advancement of human knowledge. They serve as key avenues where discoveries, and new ideas are communicated and presented. Over the years and decades, academic publishing has become the primary indicator of research productivity in terms of quality and quantity of the publications of the researcher. Recently, the ASEAN region has witnessed an astronomical rise in its research productivity (Nguyen and & Pham, 2011; Hassan, Haddawy, Kuinkel, Degelsegger, & Blasy,et al. 2012). Accompanying this research productivity boom is the thrust to improve the quality of academic journals published by ASEAN countries. Elevated awareness on the need to improve the reputation of these journals will heavily rely on journal metrics to guide editorial decisions (Chi, 2016). Thus, the ASEAN Citation Index (ACI) was established. ACI aims to consolidate bibliographic information about ASEAN journals and the information they carry, as well as to help them achieve accreditation in international databases such as the Clarivate Analytics databases and Scopus (Sombatsompop et al., 2011). The improvement of the quality of local journals represents a nationally important academic endeavor. Local journals have a significant role in the accumulation of the regional knowledge base since they serve as crucial intellectual repositories of studies in which the findings are highly relevant to the ASEAN region, such as biodiversity mapping, economic baselines, and pathologic incidences, among others. In addition, most local journals are freely accessible, which greatly necessitates the need for reliability and accuracy of the information presented. Comprehensive information regarding the performance and profile of ASEAN journals is scarce. Most studies report either country- specific data (Tecson-Mendoza, 2015; Sanni, Zainab, Raj, & Abrizah,et al. 2014; Zainab, Sanni, Edzan, & Koh,et al. 2012), or subject / journal - oriented findings (Janairo, 2018; Abrizah, 2016; Sanni & Zainab, 2010). Thus, this study aims to quantify the quality of ASEAN journals based on the database— – derived journal metrics—, and obtain the subject distribution. The findings will be beneficial to researchers, research managers, and policy makers in the region, especially now that journal improvement has become a priority.
Keywords: nanAbrizah, A. (2016). Performance of Malaysian medical journals. The Malaysian Journal of Medical Sciences, 23(2), 1-–5.
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