Audit before you advertise
Can an independent visitor verify how your journal really works?
Use this detailed readiness framework before paying for evaluation or listing. Every “yes” should be supported by a public, working page—not merely an internal policy.
Identity and accountability
Journal identity
- Is the official title identical across site, PDFs and metadata?
- Are ISSN/e-ISSN values clearly labelled?
- Are former titles or editions explained?
- Is the scope specific enough to understand?
Publisher identity
- Are owner, publisher and country disclosed?
- Is there a stable official contact route?
- Are domains and organizational relationships clear?
- Can concerns reach a responsible person?
Editorial governance and peer review
- Current editor and board names with affiliations
- Clear roles and final decision responsibility
- Named peer-review model and screening stages
- Reviewer selection, confidentiality and conflicts
- Revision stages, decision categories and appeals
- Special handling for editor-authored papers and special issues
Integrity and author-facing terms
Research integrity
Authorship, plagiarism, duplicate publication, data integrity, consent, conflicts, misconduct, corrections, retractions, complaints and appeals should be usable policies.
Publishing terms
All mandatory and optional fees, waiver rules, copyright, licences, access conditions and archiving information should be known before submission.
Publication record and metadata
- Archives open without broken issue or article links
- Dates and numbering consistent across formats
- DOIs resolving to stable landing pages
- Titles, authors, abstracts and keywords accurate
- Licence and canonical URLs present
- Crossref, OAI-PMH, RSS, XML or CSV sources tested
- Corrections and retractions reflected in metadata
Final test: ask a colleague outside the editorial office to find every item without instructions. Anything they cannot verify quickly should be improved before application.