Commitments, responsibilities, and benefits of being part of

SciELO SA

SciELO SA User’s Group Meeting 8 September 2015

SciELO SA: Overview

SciELO – Scientific Electronic Library Online www.scielo.org.za

BENEFITS: EXPANDING COLLECTION

• 58 titles to date with 1 title to be added per month • 3 926 backfiles were added in the last year

(dating back to 2008)

Future: Ideally up to 180 South African scholarly journals could be published in the collection.

SciELO SA: Benefits

Benefits of becoming part of the SciELO SA Collection

Government support:The SciELO SA Collection - Established by the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) - Funded by the Department of Science and Technology (DST)- Endorsed by the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET)

for accreditation purposes

International links:SciELO SA is an integral part of the SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library Online) portal, which had its origins in Brazil and is now distributed across most South American countries.

SciELO SA: Benefits

Benefits of being part of the SciELO SA Collection (cont)

Visibility, accessibility and impact:

SciELO SA aims to become a fully indexed open-access journal collection in the service of the South African research community through effective quality assurance, worldwide visibility, accessibility and impact and amenability to bibliometric analysis.

SciELO SA is connected to international indexing services, e.g. Thomson Reuter’s Web of Science portal now integrates the SciELO Citation Index.

SciELO SA: Benefits

SciELO SA: Benefits

Benefits of being part of the SciELO SA Collection (cont)

DHET accreditation:From 2016 journals appearing in the SciELO SA Collection including 2015 will automatically be accredited by DHET.

Collaboration:The SciELO Network provides opportunities for south-south collaboration between researchers.

Future growth: The SciELO Network Portal is fast becoming a promising multinational journal indexing and publishing model in the developing world.

SciELO SA: Benefits

Benefits of being part of the SciELO SA Collection (cont)

Feedback from SciELO SA editors:

Journal 1:

- 14 African countries are now submitting papers to our journal and 19 countries

beyond the African continent (total of 33 countries), which was unheard of

some 2-3 years ago.

- This year the journal has published the greatest number of papers ever

published since the journal’s inception.

- The journal is receiving more quality submissions that before, thanks to the

SciELO global exposure of our journal.

SciELO SA: Benefits

Benefits of being part of the SciELO SA Collection (cont)

Feedback from SciELO SA editors:

Journal 2:

- Since joining SciELO SA we have had almost 100 000 views of our texts.

- Since joining SciELO SA our readership has been transformed.

- The greater reach and visibility has enabled us to interest scholars outside SA

to be part of our editorial team.

SciELO SA: Best practice

Becoming part of SciELO SA

The journal needs to qualify for inclusion:Currently: If a journal is DHET accredited and has received a positive evaluation by the ASSAf peer-review panel (PRP).Future: At the ASSAf Council meeting in January 2016 the CSPiSA will request that a SciELO Advisory Committee be constituted to advise on the criteria for inclusion and removal of journals from the SciELO SA platform. Invitation to a journal to join:Journal recommended Check currency & periodicity Invited to join SciELO by PRP

SciELO SA: Commitment

Being part of SciELO SA COMMITMENT

Publisher’s agreement: The title owner / editor signs the publishing agreement between ASSAf and the journal.This is to safeguard both SciELO and the Journal, e.g. journal quality standards, retraction and removal of articles, termination of agreement, preservation of files. Signed agreements to be sent to ASSAf by end-Sept 2015.

SciELO SA: Responsibilities

The point of responsibilities is to maintain the quality of the collection.

SciELO SA: Responsibilities

Responsibilities of this partnership

Adhesion form:On receiving the publisher’s agreement a journal adhesion form is completed on behalf of the journal and sent to the editor for confirmation of the details.

Information pages - >

 

SciELO SA: Responsibilities

Being part of SciELORESPONSIBILITIES

PDF files of journal texts:The articles need to either be sent to the SciELO team when published; ORThe editor can advise the SciELO team when the issue is ready and the team will then harvest the texts from the journal’s website.XML:Moving to XML format next year – to improve interoperability with other indexes and indexibility and searchability

SciELO SA: Commitment

SciELO SA: Commitment

Commitment to being partners

The PARTNERSHIP entails commitments towards standards

for the collection to remain certified.

All SciELO collections are evaluated twice a year to retain their

certification.

SciELO SA: Responsibilities

Certification criteria

• Exact compliance to SciELO standards

• Open access – no embargoes – articles need to be made available on publication / CC-BY or CC-BY-NC

 

• All authors need to have affiliations added

• State and implement errata and retraction policies

SciELO SA: Responsibilities

Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) as from January 2016

Online ISSNs / ESSNs for all SciELO journals

SciELO SA: RESPONSIBILITIES

PARTNERSHIPSTANDARDS (cont)

• Minimum of 12 research articles per year

• The journals in the collection publish according to their stated periodicity.

• Rolling pass journals: Need to publish at least 3 articles by the end of April

SciELO SA: Responsibilities

RESPONSIBILITIESCURRENCY

The currency of the SciELO SA collection is evaluated end-March and end-August every year.

If a journal is not current the journal is excluded from the SciELO Citation Index (which is part of the Web of Science search portal) for the next 6-month period.

If journals have become current again, then they are included in the Web of Science search portal again.

SciELO SA: Responsibilities

RESPONSIBILITIESCURRENCY

If a journal’s currency starts threatening the certification evaluation of the SciELO SA Collection then the SciELO Advisory Committee will request the journal to improve its currency within a set period of time. There are 3 SciELO SA journals that are not at present part of

SciELO Citation Index due to currency problems.

SciELO SA: Responsibilities

RESPONSIBILITIES

Criteria to REMAIN part of SciELO SA

If the journal cannot improve its currency within the next 12 months then it will temporarily be removed from the collection. Once the currency of the journal improves again, it will become part of the collection again.

SciELO SA

SciELO SA: Benefits

SciELO SA: Benefits

BENEFITS

Dissemination, visibility, indexibility, findability

Since 2009 SciELO SA texts have been viewed more than 3 million+ views.

SciELO SA: Benefits

BENEFITS

Dissemination, visibility, indexibility, findability

12-month period Total views of texts in the SciELO SA Collection

Sept 2013 – August 2014 653 898

Sept 2014 – August 2015 1 316 708 (50% increase)

SciELO SA

BENEFITS Dissemination, visibility, indexibility, findability 

Growth in cities visiting SciELO SA

50% increase

SciELO SA

 

SciELO SA : Operational team

SciELO SA

Louise van Heerden:

SciELO SA: Operations Manager

louise@assaf.org.za