Under the national strategy of advancing high-quality development driven by new quality productive forces (NQPFs), regional innovation ecosystems have emerged as core engines for industrial upgrading and high-quality technological advancement. As key nodes for knowledge dissemination and resource linkage in regional innovation systems, local sci-tech journals have long been constrained by the traditional academic evaluation system dominated by impact factors and citation frequencies, leading to severe misalignment between content supply and regional industrial demands, insufficient full-chain innovation service capabilities, and underdeveloped supporting systems for value-oriented development. Most journals focus on general basic research with high citation potential while neglecting applied research relevant to local pillar industries, and remain confined to traditional publication functions without adequate capacity for industry–university–research collaboration, technological demand identification, or achievement transformation. Although tentative reforms have emerged, they are limited to superficial adjustments such as special columns and small-scale forums, failing to break away from over-reliance on single quantitative indicators or establish a complete value-creation operational mechanism, resulting in homogeneous competition and weak endogenous momentum for transformation. Based on relevant national policies and the practical needs of regional innovation, this paper systematically elucidates the logic of shifting from an evaluation-driven to a value-driven model along four dimensions: internal and external motivations, demand traction, development orientation, and policy support. The internal and external motivation is to break the path dependence of the evaluation-driven model and rebuild the positioning of local journals as regional characteristic knowledge hubs. Demand traction derives from the requirement of regional innovation ecosystems to bridge the gap between basic research and industrial application, urging journals to upgrade from single-achievement publication to full-process innovation empowerment. Development orientation aims to build a multi-stakeholder value co-creation network to escape homogeneous competition and balance social and economic benefits. Policy support—including evaluation system reform, digital technology application, and growing market demand—provides a solid institutional and environmental foundation for transformation. It then proposes a five-dimensional integrated pathway for local journals to deeply engage with regional innovation ecosystems: first, repositioning journals by anchoring local industrial characteristics; second, optimizing content supply oriented to industrial scenarios; third, extending service boundaries to embed the full innovation chain; fourth, building a multi-stakeholder co-creation ecosystem; and fifth, upgrading operational mechanisms to enhance supporting capacity. To ensure the effective implementation of this transformation, a three-tier safeguard system involving policy-making departments, industry competent authorities, and journal sponsors is established. This study breaks through the limitations of existing research that focuses on single regions or disciplines, and integrates journal transformation with the systematic construction of regional innovation ecosystems. It provides a theoretically sound and practically feasible framework for local sci-tech journals to break the constraints of traditional evaluation, realize functional upgrading from single-publication to full-process innovation empowerment, and achieve differentiated development integrated into regional innovation systems. In the future, local sci-tech journals are expected to act as core knowledge-service carriers to boost the construction of NQPFs and sustainable regional high-quality development.