While it’s highly beneficial for publishers to have their publications accessible and discoverable on the internet and academic search databases such as Google, Google Scholar, Scopus, and the likes, sometimes it requires additional effort if you want to increase the reach of your academic content.
Getting your paper indexed in Abstracting and Indexing databases – or A&Is – is of the essence if you aspire to build a strong reputation and make your publications more discoverable online. Even more so as it’s one of the most widely used methods of searching for articles among the researchers’ community.
It may seem like a daunting task at first, considering that each index database maintains different inclusion standards, policies, and requirements. However, once you’re familiar with these nuances and start applying to indexes that match your journal’s scope, you will succeed.
In order for you to better understand the process of getting included in A&Is and to come up with your individual indexing strategy, we’ve prepared this list with basic indexing standards and requirements for journals. Hopefully, this will shed some light on how indexing works and will help you get started.
To Get Your Journal Indexed:
- make sure your journal’s discipline is compatible with the index scope. You’ll find that some indexes are dedicated exclusively to one subject or discipline, such as humanities, social sciences, mathematics, etc.
- find out if you need to have a minimum publishing experience to be included in a specific index. Some indexes only accept journals that already have some years of activity within the field or a certain amount of published peer-reviewed articles
- get ready to provide some information about your editorial board – some indexes need to verify the credentials of your journal’s staff before taking any step forward
- make sure your publications are prepared following the professional guidelines. The flawless appearance of tables, figures, and the general quality of the journal are important criteria in some indexes
- you should have clearly stated copyright policies on your journal’s website as well as the journal itself
- one of the key requirements for journals is providing the index with International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
- make sure your articles have Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs)
- you should have a detailed peer review policy stated in your journal
- make sure you provide essential metadata for all the articles.
What else is recommended in addition to having your articles indexed?
Apart from complying with the basic indexing standards and some specific requirements that vary in each index, you should also make sure your journal’s publishing platform has link sharing functionalities that enable you to display the URLs of indexes featuring your publications.