In the Russian Federation, there are two independent lists of scientific journals used in evaluating the research activities of organizations and/or authors: the “White List” of scientific journals and the “List of peer-reviewed scientific journals in which the main scientific results of dissertations for the degree of Candidate of science, for the degree of Doctor of science” should be published, approved by the Higher Attestation Commission (HAC) under the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation (hereinafter referred to as the HAC List). The HAC List is considered as one of the possible sources of replenishment of the “White List” of Russian journals, the purpose of which is to become the main source of information on the achievements of Russian scientists. Therefore, the qualitative level of the journals of the HAC List comes to the fore. The purpose of the study is to evaluate the effectiveness of the system for selecting journals of the HAC List by analyzing the quality of their editorial policy and visibility to the scientific and educational community. The analysis was carried out using the data from the HAC List (as of July 2024), taking into account the distribution of journals into three categories obtained in accordance with the methodology for ranking and categorizing scientific journals of the HAC List, as well as in accordance with the RISC data. According to the results of the study, not all journals on the HAC List meet the basic requirements for journals: 46.6% of the 2,146 reviewed journals meet the visibility criteria for the scientific and educational community, and 72.1% meet the editorial policy quality criteria. At the same time, a clear correlation is observed between the categories assigned to the journals and the degree of compliance with the selected groups of criteria: the highest compliance was noted in the group of journals of the first category. Based on the results of the study, proposals were formulated for the formation of a transparent system for evaluating journals as the main element of a unified national system for evaluating scientific activity (the Unified State List of Scientific Journals– “White List”).