SciELO updates the indexing criteria. New version takes effect from May 2020

By Abel L Packer, Denise Peres, Solange Santos, Alex Mendonça

The SciELO Program has updated the document “Criteria, policy and procedures for the admission and permanence of journals in the SciELO Brazil Collection” with a new version that takes effect from May 2020. The document is referred to as SciELO Brazil Criteria for its purpose and function of contributing to the development of Brazil’s journals, and at the same time, it serves as a reference for the indexing criteria of all SciELO Network collections.

The SciELO Brazil Criteria are a key component of the SciELO Publishing Model. They reflect the objectives, principles and functions of the SciELO Program and implement the priority lines of action for professionalization, internationalization and sustainability that since 2018 are aligned with the open science modus operandi.

The renewal of the Criteria is a consequence of the analyzes, conclusions and recommendations of the SciELO 20 Years Week, held in September 2018, which has become a global forum for analysis and debate on the state of scholarly communication in view of the advances of the SciELO Program and SciELO Network . The agenda’s emphasis was on the publication of quality journals and the challenges and paths for their alignment with the state of the art, especially the progressive adoption of open science research communication practices.

Thus, the Criteria are inductive and proactive in strengthening and expanding national infrastructures and scholarly communication capacities and in improving journals. The Criteria’s centrality is to guide the evaluation of journals based on best editorial practices that include alignment with open science practices.

Indexable journals according to the SciELO Brazil Criteria publish mostly peer reviewed research articles and contribute to the development of research in a discipline or thematic area, present conditions of operational and financial sustainability, rely on an editorial board recognized in the discipline or thematic area it serves, operate well-defined manuscripts evaluation procedures regarding the ethical research standards and communication of research results, scientific rigor and evaluation time, according to the median of journals in the area, include in the texts of the approved articles all data elements required in the XML file according to SciELO Publishing Schema, as well as adopt editorial policy and management progressively aligned with open science practices.

The adjustment of policies and editorial management in the perspective of the progressive adoption of open science is the main action that indexed journals must carry out to comply with the new criteria. The practices that will be required from SciELO journals refer, first, to accepting submission of manuscripts-preprints, i.e., that are posted in a preprint server; second, citing and referencing all data, software codes and other content underlying the articles texts in order to facilitate research evaluation and replicability, and preservation and reuse of content; and third, options for opening peer review. This adjustment is expected to occur by the end of 2020 for journals already indexed.

The new policy should promote open science, initially by encouraging and educating authors on the proper preparation of manuscripts, on the evaluation criteria used by the journal, and, subsequently, demanding compliance with those practices as a condition for accepting a manuscript. In summary, the adjustment affects the following components of editorial policy and management: about the journal, instructions to authors, manuscript submission form, guides to editors and reviewers and peer review form. SciELO recommends that journals require authors to attach a file compatible with the Open Science Compliance Form to the manuscript, which summarizes the open science practices planned and recommended by the journal. The initial version of the form admits non-compliance with practices. As most submissions of quality manuscripts comply with the practices, the journal may then make them mandatory.

The assessment of journals submitted before May 2020 will continue to be performed according to the previous criteria of October 2017.

External links

SciELO Brasil Criteria <https://www.scielo.org/en/about-scielo/methodologies-and-technologies/criteria-policies-and-procedures-for-the-admission-and-permanence-of-scientific-journals-in-the-scielo-collection/scielo-brazil-criteria/>

Open Science Compliance Form <https://wp.scielo.org/wp-content/uploads/Open-Science-Compliance-Form_en.docx>

SciELO 20 Years <https://www.scielo20.org/en/>

SciELO Publishing Schema <https://scielo.readthedocs.io/projects/scielo-publishing-schema/pt_BR/latest/>

Translated from the original in Portuguese by Lilian Nassi-Calò.