One of the biggest challenges for scientific journals is membership in international indexing databases. Membership of a journal in such databases enhances the visibility, readability, and availability of articles. Indexing databases are usually classified into three groups, as follows
International general databases, such as ISI
Specialized databases, including Embase and MEDLINE
Databases for special locations regarded as third-level databases
It is difficult for a journal to be indexed in databases of grade 1 and 2 since these databases usually involve severe criteria for membership, including
- Quality of editorial board
- All the published articles of a journal should follow the journal guidelines
- The journal should have a clear title
- Articles should have clear titles and abstracts
- The articles should include the appropriate style of referencing (based on journal guideline)
- Name of authors and their affiliations should be clearly stated in the article
- The articles should be subjected to peer-review
- Ethical issues should be observed in all the articles
- Quality of production
- The articles should be published on time and based on the schedule
- The articles should be designed with proper illustration
- Scientific content
- The journal should consider the subjects of future conferences
- The scope of the journal should include heated topics (controversy) of the day
- The journal should give priority to original research papers
- The number of original studies should be higher than systematic and case studies
- Linguistic properties
Title, abstract, keywords, and references should be in English even if the whole article is written in a non-English article
- Variety
- The reference list of an article should include a variety of authors and researchers
- Authors with different affiliations should cooperate in writing an article
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