Global visibility of nationally published research output: the case of the post-Soviet region

National journals represent an important part of the landscape in almost any academic system. Their role may vary from being mere outlets for publishing country-specific studies in local languages to hosting global research. With the process of globalization in recent decades, such journals (as well as their authors) have increasingly gained opportunities to become internationally visible and to be read worldwide. Suggesting the definition of a national journal as being exogenous and with unaltered characteristics with respect to any changes in the journal’s content and policy, we provide the first up-to-date analysis of national output in post-Soviet countries, at the levels of both journal and article, for the period 2010–2019. In general, publications in local journals (associated in Scopus with the countries under consideration) constitute a substantial proportion of the national research output, with the most numerous representations of national journals found in Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, and Estonia. The journals in the countries under consideration differ in their disciplinary composition, quality, language policy and visibility, reflecting the divergence of the countries in the decades since their independence. Although analysis of these journals suggests they are not true vehicles for communication with a global community providing international visibility for their authors, the demand for publication in internationally indexed, national journals is high and the number of journals (and articles published) has grown substantially in the last decade.