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Journal classification portals: new indexing trend
Wileidys Artigas
Ilya Casanova
There is a new trend regarding the indexing of journals, now
we are faced with a diversity of internet portals that ask a series of
questions and classify the journal within a specific group related to open
access, the form of documentation treatment, compliance with certain stan[1]dards, embargo
periods, among other elements. The idea of this letter is to make a summary of
the most significant portals that currently exist in terms of current trends.
Also, is a way to see how the long classification process in indexing is
changing to make it more dynamic and automatic, being different of the long
time wait for indexing that the journals face normally or used to face for big
indexation services. Here is a small list of them (the three most recently
constituted or renewed, such as the Sherpa-Romeo case), and then talk about
what each one is about and point out the web link where it can be located:
a. Responsible Journals.
Webpage: www.responsiblejournals.org
Year of creation: 2020
Organization: Centre for Science and
Technology Studies, Leiden University.
It is a web platform created in order to
contribute to the organization responsible for edi[1]torial
procedures carried out by academic scientific journals. It makes it easy for
publishers to show transparency about their procedures, gives recommendations
to publishers and publish[1]ers for improvements
to peer review procedures, and presents integrated information on the variety
of review procedures in use. In addition, it maintains a database on the
current peer review format of journals and provides information and mechanisms
to use these metrics in a responsible way1 . It focuses on peer review, based
on the research by Horbach and Halffman (2018), where the following criteria
are indicated: selection and accreditation of good science (accredita[1]tion mechanism),
improvement of the quality and accuracy of a work sent (contribution to
improvement), provides fair and equitable opportunities for all actors
(although now open re[1]view is promoted),
activates the filter for problematic research (although it cannot be present at
the time of the experiments, there are the programs that can verify plagiarism
and data manipulation). It is contemplated to register the scientific journal
and ask questions with reference to four aspects: time and selectivity; opening
of the review, specialization of the review and techno[1]logical
support of the review. It provides a database on journals and their current
editorial procedures, which makes possible a vision on strengths and weaknesses
in editorial proce[1]dures, which can be
taken as a basis to improve editorial policies. In addition, it enables the
query of the complete database as input. The essence of this platform is that
the journals answer the questions and, based on their answers in each aspect,
make recommendations on alternatives that are currently available (if the
journal is not using it).
b Transpose Website: https://transpose-publishing.github.io/
Year of creation: 2018, launched in 2019.
Organization: Unidentified, it arises from
a group of professors from various recognized organizations such as ASAPbio,
Crossref, BioRxiv and PREreview and TU Graz, among oth[1]ers.
It stands for TRANnsparency in Scholarly
Publishing for Open Scholarship Evolution (TRANSPOSE) and is an initiative to
create a database about journal policies. They are fo[1]cused
on open review, co-review, and detailed preprint policies. Receive
contributions from everyone. but seek verification from magazines and
publishers. The goal is to foster new practices while raising awareness among
authors, editors, and other stakeholders, and seeks to provide funding to help
journals establish, share, and clarify their policies2 . It has a link to add a
current record that leads to a questionnaire. Clarifies that the ques[1]tionnaire can be left
blank in the sections that do not interest you (all questions are optional except
the email and the name of the journal), it has 6 parts: email and magazines;
open peer review; co-reviewers and peer review structure; transfer of peer
review; peer review credit and detailed prepress policies. When the journal is
displayed, the following fields are detailed: peer review type, peer review
policy (leads to a link if the journal inserts URL), peer review format, peer review
credit policy, credit in Publons / ORCID, Peer Review Transfer Policy.
c. Sherpa-Romeo. Website: https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/
Year
of creation: 2005, 2020 change of web link and policies.
Organization: Joint Information Systems
Committee
It is a database on editorial policies
related to self-archiving of journal articles on the web and in open access
repositories. It helps to clarify the situation to authors and anyone
interested in knowing the policies of the magazines and avoid confusion when sharing
content on the internet. Covers peer review serials and papers that are
suggested by readers3.
It is an online program that analyzes
publications based on open access policies, estab[1]lished
worldwide, shows the summary of the journal in terms of self-archiving
permissions and the rights granted to authors and journals, this portal also
collaborates with DOAJ. Previously they did a color classification, but in the
new version they declare that this was eliminated.
If any publisher or journal is not on the
list, it can be suggested, for the journals they ask that it have an ISSN, that
the editorial board be clearly indicated on the journal’s website, as well as
all licenses, open access policies and Copyright.
The process involves filling out a form
with the journal’s data, publisher, as well as the data of the person
submitting the suggestion and if they have any position in the journal. They
receive the suggestion, evaluate it based on their criteria, taking into
account the information published in the provided web addresses of the journal,
and publish the result. As a result of this collection of information, the
lists that are generated are for the use of the academic community.
This approach to the portals is only a
summary that comes from a book that is being written about it, which will help
us to take a brief look at the new trends in responsible practices. Below we
show through the following table (table 1) the elements to which each of these
portals are mainly related, specifically if they deal with open access issues,
peer review or procedures carried out by the journal editor. As can be seen,
the TRANSPOSE portal is one of the three that is related to the three elements,
we englobe for this portal in the editors procedures elements as preprints,
media and coverage.
It could be said then that these elements
are related to the internal practices of the journals and these three portals
are oriented to find elements to make classifications in this regard. There are
also portals that measure external elements such as the participation and
ethical practices of the author, however, this may be developed in future
installments or may be ob[1]served in the book to
be published for us in 2022.
