The report presents a strategy to further promote academic historical journals after their inclusion into the Scopus and Web of Science Core Collection citation databases. By 2016, 10 Russian journals had been included in these bases. Scopus started indexing the following Russian journals: “Archaeology, Ethnology and Anthropology of Eurasia” in 2006-2015, “Social Evolution and History” in 2011-2014, “Bylye gody” in 2012-2016, “Novij istoricheskij vestnik” in 2012-2015, “Studia Slavica et Balcanica Petropolitana” in 2014-2015, “Ab Imperio” in 2013-2015 (it should be noted that this latter journal was initially established in Russia in 2000, but since then has been published in the USA), “Gosudarstvo, religiya, tserkov v Rossii I za rubezhom” in 2015. In 2016, the journal “Novejshaya Istoriya Rossii” is also expected to enter Scopus. WoS CC indexes “Voprosy istorii” and “Rossijskaya istoriya”. In 2015, the journal “Quaestio Rossica” was included in WoS CC. Therefore, it should be noted that technical barriers - the strict inclusion criteria of high-ranking journals - turned out to be passable. Subsequently, however, a new, rather complicated problem arose: the low citation level. Only 5 Russian historical journals are presented in the SCImago Journal & Country Rank (2014), with one being included in the first, one - in the second, two - in the third and one - in the fourth quartile. The aim of this research was to analyse the reasons behind the current situation and to suggest possible solutions.