Choosing a Journal

Major databases can be incredibly important for increasing the visibility of a journal and in disseminating your research to wide audiences. Databases generally also have selection criteria that journals must meet in order to be indexed.

Inclusion in the exclusive MEDLINE Journal list, which makes up the backbone of PubMed, is controlled by the Literature Selection Technical Review Committee (LSTRC), which sets forth stringent criteria for review. LSTRC requires new journals to demonstrate quality in content, editorial work, and production. In addition, online journals need to be accessible for at least 12 months and have published at least 40 articles before a MEDLINE application can be submitted.

PubMed does not have a re-evaluation process, so any journals that fall below the original quality review are not penalized, nor does PubMed stop indexing future content.

Elsevier's Scopus and Clarivate Analytics' Web of Science also have stringent review processes for accepting new journals in their databases. Scopus' Content Selection & Advisory Board continuously review suggestions for new journals using both quantitative and qualitative measures. Web of Science has an in-house Editorial Review team and requires journals to meet their 28 quality standards before inclusion in the Science Citation Index. Web of Science requires new journals to submit three consecutive current issues. They review over 3,500 journal applications each year, accepting only 10% of those submitted. Most importantly, new journals need to be indexed by these databases to receive legitimate journal-level metrics, such as the Impact Factor and CiteScore.

Both Scopus and Web of Science evaluate journals over time. They monitor journals to determine if:

• A journal has a much higher self-citation rate compared to peer journals, which means it is trying to increase its metrics by having its authors cite content only from the journal itself.
• The journal receives many fewer citations compared to peer journals, which means researchers are less likely to trust the science in articles published by the journal.
• The impact factor is much lower than peer journals, which means the journal is not able to compete with its peers attracting articles and citations.

Scopus and Web of Science will discontinue indexing a journal that no longer meets their criteria.

The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) requires journals to be fully open access, and they must consistently publish at least give scholarly articles per year targeted at researchers or practitioners within their fields, and they must follow the transparency and best practices criteria. DOAJ does allow users to provide comments on journals currently in the list but does not re-evaluate or monitor a journal once they are in the dictionary.

New journals applying for inclusion in PubMed Central, the full-text partner to PubMed, undergo review by the Operations Division of the National Library of Medicine. This review generally requires new journals to have a two-year history of quality publications including at least 25 articles before an application can be submitted.