Indexing & Archiving
WHAT ARE INDEXES?
Online indexes are collections of journals organised by subject, author, institution, or other factors. These indexes are searchable platforms, helping users discover published material on particular topics.
Some indexes may focus on journals and books from particular fields. For instance, PubMed Central only features biomedical journals. On the other hand, an index like SCOPUS features journals all across the social sciences, physical sciences, life sciences, and medical sciences.
INDEXING CRITERIA
Most indexes require that journals submit to join, and have to go through review to check that they meet particular standards.
Some indexes, like Google Scholar, only require that the journal or website host predominantly scholarly material, that each article have its own URL, and that the content is formatted properly as an HTML or PDF file. Most reputable indexes have stricter criteria.
Common conditions for a journal to be featured in an index include:
- Clearly stated peer review policies.
- Consistent publication of new articles/issues.
- Transparent editorial board with members in good standing.
- Published material is free of errors and makes original contributions to the journal’s field.
- ISSN properly registered with portal.issn
- Online availability of all the journal’s published material.
- Proper typesetting and layout for published files.
Different indexes will have different thresholds for some of their criteria, particularly when it comes to article count.
By instituting criteria such as these, indexes ensure that they are sharing high-quality journals. Being accepted by a well-known index shows that a journal is publishing work that is properly peer reviewed, well-written, and original.
Therefore, it’s important to include transparent journal policies on your website, to publish regularly, and to regularly submit to new indexes as you meet their criteria, as this will widen your outreach within the scholarly community and build your reputation as a reliable journal.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF BEING INDEXED?
Being included in an index can improve the likelihood that other researchers in similar fields will be searching for, and finding, the research published in a journal. It also increases the likelihood that established authors will want to publish with a journal.
Some indexes also provide their own analytical tools to help journals understand their outreach and impact based on citations. Journals registered with Web of Science and SCOPUS receive their own Impact Factor and CiteScore metrics respectively. These scores indicate the frequency of citations for the “average article” in a given period for a journal.
WHAT IS COVERED BY ]u[ UBIQUITY PRESS JOURNAL INDEXING SERVICES
When a new journal with indexing services joins Ubiquity Press, our indexing specialists will keep track of when the journal becomes eligible to submit to different indexes.
Indexes that Ubiquity Press targets include:
- BDS
- Cengage/Gale
- Chronos
- CNKI
- DOAJ
- EBSCO Knowledge Base
- ERiH PLUS
- ExLibris
- Google Scholar
- J-GATE
- Knowledge Base+
- Medline
- Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals
- OCLC
- OpenAire
- Proquest
- PubMed Central
- Scopus
- SHERPA RoMEO
- Web of Science
Our indexing services submit journals to new indexes at the end of every month as journals achieve the appropriate criteria. If a journal is interested in applying to a new index which ]u[ Ubiquity does not already monitor, they can request that we apply to it via our indexing services.