Ministry of Education and Training Organizing the Seminar on "Building Experience in Journals Meeting Scopus/ACI Standards" at UEH

16 Jul, 2024

On July 5, 2024, University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City (UEH) was honored to coordinate with the Department of Science, Technology and Environment - Ministry of Education and Training to organize the Seminar on "Building Experience in Journals Meeting Scopus/ACI Standards" with the aim of exchanging experiences between journals that have met Scopus/ACI standards and suggesting solutions to improve the quality of journals of units under the Ministry in the direction of meeting Scopus/ACI standards.

Attending the Seminar, on the side of the Ministry of Education and Training, there was the participation of Assoc.Prof.Dr. Nguyen Van Phuc - Deputy Minister of Education and Training and Dr. Vu Thanh Binh - Deputy Director of the Department of Science, Technology and Environment - Ministry of Education and Training.

On the side of University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City, there were Prof. Dr. Su Dinh Thanh - Director of UEH; Prof. Dr. Nguyen Khac Quoc Bao - Deputy Director of UEH; Prof. Dr. Nguyen Trong Hoai - Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Asian Business and Economic Studies together with the leadership, Editor-in-Chiefs, science and technology departments/divisions of journals at universities, colleges, and research institutes under the Ministry of Education & Training nationwide.

Overview of the seminar

Speaking at the seminar, Deputy Minister Nguyen Van Phuc shared that developing domestic journals integrating with countries in the region and worldwide is an important task. In the future, researchers can publish articles in domestic journals with international quality and standards. The Deputy Minister informed that there are currently 32 journals under higher education institutions managed by the Ministry of Education and Training (excluding member schools). Based on the position, role and importance of journals, in the past, the Ministry of Education and Training has supported 18 journals to develop plans to meet ACI standards; 02 journals to meet Scopus standards. He expressed his joy that at the end of the implementation, 2 journals - Journal of Asian Business and Economic Studies of the University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City and Journal of Economics and Development of the National Economics University have completed the goal of being indexed in Scopus. 08 journals have completed the goal of being indexed in ACI. The remainder are awaiting results to be announced from ACI in 2024.

Deputy Minister Nguyen Van Phuc at the seminar

Prof. Dr. Nguyen Trong Hoai - Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Asian Business and Economic Studies, shared some experiences of being indexed in Web of Science and Scopus of JABES, and made some policy suggestions. JABES was officially recognized as part of the prestigious international database of Web of Science (WoS) in May 2021. More importantly, on March 6, 2022, after a long and persistent effort, along with a strict registration, appraisal, evaluation and review process, JABES was officially indexed in Scopus. Most recently, in 2023, SCImago and the Scopus databases ranked prestigious journals in Scopus, and JABES was rated as Q1. This result once again affirms the academic reputation of JABES in the domestic and international scientific community. Based on the specific situation of JABES, Prof. Dr. Nguyen Trong Hoai presented 6 important experiences that need to be prepared to be officially indexed in WoS and Scopus, including financial support from the Ministry of Education and Training, attention from training institutions and efforts of the Journal throughout the process of improving the recognition and academic quality of articles from the global scholarly community publishing research results according to the published scope.

Prof. Dr. Nguyen Trong Hoai at the discussion session

At the Seminar, Prof. Dr. Le Quoc Hoi - Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Economics and Development, National Economics University presented "Experience in International Integration of Vietnamese Journals: Perspective from the Journal of Economics and Development". Prof. Dr. Le Quoc Hoi said that improving the quality of journals for indexing in international databases has become an urgent requirement." To improve the quality of Vietnamese journals, as well as to have more and more journals indexed in WoS, Scopus and ACI, it is time for managers of Vietnamese journals to work seriously and determine the right roadmap, steps and specific solutions according to the criteria of the international peer review system. This is a task that needs support from the government and the scientific community so that Vietnam can soon have more journals that meet international standards ", Prof. Dr. Le Quoc Hoi asserted.

Prof. Dr. Le Quoc Hoi presenting at the Seminar

Presenting in the discussion, Associate Professor, Dr. Dinh Van Thuat - Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Construction Science and Technology said that Vietnam needed to have more Scopus/WoS journals to publish domestic and foreign articles. To do so, there needs to be a strong initial investment in specialized human resources and facilities, especially finance to maintain activities including services using the international editing and publishing system that some international organizations have monopolized for many years. Current domestic journal activities cannot generate enough revenue to cover necessary expenses.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Dinh Van Thuat presenting

The seminar ended with a discussion and exchange between units on the issue of rapidly increasing the number of journals indexed in ACI/Scopus. Deputy Minister Nguyen Van Phuc said that in the upcoming time, the Ministry of Education and Training will have a plan, roadmap and program to support the Vietnamese higher education system in building international standard journals in line with the expectation of being indexed in WoS/Scopus as well as other prestigious indices in the world.