Quality criteria for serials

The REDIB standards, originally based on the widely known 'Latindex Standards', are generally aimed at ensuring the scientific rigour of all the journals included in the platform. More specifically, these standards provide support and guidance for publishers of scientific content on how best to improve the way they edit and publish content.

This new version 2.0 of the admission standards for inclusion in the REDIB platform maintains essentially the same standards as in the previous version, but now regroups them by subject matter and includes a number of new recommended standards that envisage both technical aspects and other factors concerning the ethics of scientific publishing.

Both the technical and the formal REDIB standards are classified as either compulsory, meaning they must be met for admission in the platform, or recommended as a suggestion for improving the content. All are aimed at enhancing existing procedures and technologies for publishing scientific journals and for making the process more innovative.

The standards are grouped into five areas:

A. Editorial Policy: those declarative and defining aspects that ensure the scientific rigour of the journal and guarantee its openness of authorship and peer-review.
B. Editorial Management: editorial and technical requirements whereby the editorial policy is executed.
C. Presentation of the journal: the formal and technical aspects needed to ensure online access to the journal.
D. Presentation of content: the formal aspects needed to ensure that content and authorship are identified, plus the technical aspects to ensure proper online dissemination and interoperability, including new electronic file formats.
E. Participation: standards that must be met in order to take part in the REDIB platform.
 
 

A. Editorial policy standards

A1 Compulsory

A1.1. The journal clearly identifies the publishing body or institution and defines the editorial responsibility, whether institutional or individual.
A1.2. The journal declares its scientific objectives, the scope of its subject matter and its target audience.
A1.3. The journal clearly identifies an editorial team responsible for applying the editorial policy and management, stating the governing body and delegate bodies and individually identifying all team members including their academic affiliation.
A1.4. The journal expressly declares that articles must be original and previously unpublished.
A1.5. At least 60% of the journal content consists of original research within the scientific and academic realms.
A1.6. The journal is open to the participation and involvement of authors unrelated to the publishing body or institution.
A1.7. The journal ensures the collaboration of external reviewers not belonging to its editorial team or the publishing body or institution.

A2 Recommended

A2.1. The majority of the editorial staff does not belong to the publishing body or institution.
A2.2. The journal has a Good Practices Guide describing the responsibilities of journal editors, authors and reviewers, and the guidelines on how to resolve conflicts as and when these arise.

B. Editorial management standards

B1 Compulsory

B1.1. The journal has its own website to allow full access to articles and content.
B1.2. The journal has e-ISSN or ISSN-L.
B1.3. The journal states and complies with the publication frequency.
B1.4. The journal shows the publication guidelines, detailing the instructions to authors and the procedure for the submission, selection and peer-review of originals.
B1.5. The journal provides information on the terms for the use and reuse of contents (Creative Commons or other licenses).

B2 Recommended

B2.1. The journal has a data provider based on the OAI-PMH protocol for exporting article metadata in Dublin Core format.
B2.2. The journal is indexed in one or more of the main directories, databases, catalogues, virtual libraries, etc.
B2.3 The journal uses tools to help detect plagiarism in any of its forms.

C. Journal presentation standards

C1 Compulsory

C1.1. The journal\u201a\304\364s website is browsable and functional, enabling quick and easy access to contents.
C1.2. Journal issues are correlative and presented consistently.
C1.3. Each journal issue shows a table of contents (index or summary).
C1.4. The journal provides independent access to full-text articles and other documents as separate files, and not to full issues as a single file or to the table of contents.

C2 Recommended

C2.1. The source code of the journal's home page shows Dublin Core meta-tags with the main information on the journal.
C2.2. The journal has simple and advanced search engines for locating documents.
C2.3. The journal offers value-added services such as subscriptions, alerts, help section, etc.

D. Content presentation standards

D1 Compulsory

D1.1. All authors are duly identified, including their academic affiliation.
D1.2. The title, summary and key words of all published articles and other documents must be at least in English language.
D1.3. The bibliography cited in each article is presented in a specific and independent section.

D2 Recommended

D2.1. All published articles and other documents feature the bibliographic information (title, volume, number, place and date).
D2.2. Published articles show the reception and acceptation dates.
D2.3. Articles and other documents have a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) or a similar resource.
D2.4. Articles identify their authors with their ORCID code (Open Researcher and Contributor ID).
D2.5. The full text of all articles is published in XHTML format.
D2.6. The full text of all articles is published in XML format compliant with the JATS NLM Journal Publishing 3.0 standard.
D2.7 Cited bibliography in each article is included as an exportable field in Dublin Core format under the OAI-PMH protocol.
D2.8. The title, summary and key words of all published articles and other documents are in at least two languages, one of which must be English.

E. Platform inclusion standards

E1 Compulsory

E1.1. All journals must have successfully completed 12 months of publishing activity, meeting their stated publication deadlines, before applying for inclusion in the platform.