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Legal Scholarship Publishing Guide: Journal Indexing

What Why How

What, Why, and How: Journal Indexing

What are journal indexes?

Journal indexes (also called bibliographic indexes or bibliographic databases) are collections of journals organized by discipline, subject, author or publication. Journal indexes facilitate search and retrieval requests within online scholarly databases, helping users find the right publication for their research purposes.
 

Why is it important to be indexed?

Journals should apply to be indexed into reputable academic databases because the vetting process requires a strong commitment to best practices in scholarly publishing. Such practices demonstrate scholarly publishing ethics, distinguishing them from predatory journals.

Journals indexed by reputable academic databases, such as Scopus or Web of Science, enhance its profile and visibility. Increased visibility leads to stronger journal-level metrics, including citation speed for articles within the journal.
 

How does a journal get indexed?

Law journals are usually easily indexed by legal indexing databases, but they face challenges in being indexed in multidisciplinary databases due to strict vetting processes.

It is important to focus your efforts on the right academic databases and search engines. In general, both open access and subscription-based legal journals should aim to be indexed in reputable academic databases such as Scopus and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).
 

Inclusion Criteria

Requirements for inclusion are generally the same across scholarly indexes. A reputable index will want to see that a journal follows best practices, but some are more basic than others depending on the index.

This chart includes links to journal inclusion criteria and application form from multidisciplinary scholarly indexes:
 

Scholarly Index Database

Selection criteria

Application form

Scopus (Multidisciplinary)

Scopus Content Policy and Selection

Scopus Title Suggestion Form

DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) (Multidisciplinary)

DOAJ: Guide to applying

DOAJ Application form

ProjectMUSE (Social Sciences and Humanities)

Journal Collections

ProjectMuse Application form

Web of Science (Science and Engineering)

Journal Evaluation Process and Selection Criteria

Publisher Portal