Impact factor

A journal may be called an “international journal” on the basis of certain criteria. With the arrival of online journals, certain new points should be noted:

A)     An international journal should have international subscribers from a good number of countries. It is not sufficient to have international authors or editors to call a journal ‘international’. Rather a journal has to be judged on the basis of its reception by the readers/users and by its impact in the field of research.

B)      The best way to judge is to see whether the journal is included in international directories and databases like EBSCO, Elsevier, MLA, DOAJ, Ulrichs etc.

C)      Many universities have digital libraries and it is to be noted whether the journal is included in reputed institutional digital libraries. However, this is applicable for online journals.

D)     Then, the quality of the journal has to be judged on the basis of its citation index. Google Scholar can be used to see how often articles from the journal are cited.

E)      For scientific journal Thompson Reuters Impact Factor has to be considered.

F)      In the wake of “publish or perish” policy, many fake journals have popped up both in electronic and print formats and they claim to be ‘international’ on some dubious criteria in order to earn money from the authors. Many use ISSN as standard of quality. But ISSN is not indicative of policy; rather its value is in numerical indexing of periodicals. A strict policy should be formed internationally for allowing a journal such terms on the header or in the title itself. An international authoritative body should be there to issue such certificates.