INDEXATION CRITERIA Christian Kieling, MD Department of Psychiatry, Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil WPA International Congress Beijing, September 2010

Medline Decision whether or not to index a journal is made by the Director of the National Library of Medicine (NLM), based on considerations of both scientific policy and scientific quality The Literature Selection Technical Review Committee (LSTRC) reviews journal titles and assesses the quality of their contents (incorporating advices of outside experts in the subject area) As a result of these reviews, currently indexed titles may be dropped and new titles added

Medline criteria Scope, coverage, audience, and quality of content  predominantly on core biomedical subjects, targeted to the health professions; scientific merit is the primary consideration in selecting journals for indexing Types of content 1.original research 2.original clinical observations with analysis and discussion 3.analysis of philosophical/social aspects of health sciences 4.critical reviews 5.statistical compilations 6.descriptions of evaluation of methods or procedures 7.case reports with discussions

Medline criteria Production quality  quality of layout, printing, graphics, and illustrations Geographic coverage  “special attention is given to research, public health, epidemiology, standards of health care, and indigenous diseases”  journals will generally not be selected if contents are already well represented or if they are being published for a local audience Foreign language journals  same criteria as for those written in English  however, the majority of published articles should contain an English-language abstract

Medline criteria Quality of editorial work  objectivity, credibility, and quality of contents information about the methods of selecting articles, especially on the explicit process of external peer review statements indicating adherence to ethical guidelines evidence that authors disclose financial conflicts of interest timely correction of errors explicit responsible retractions as appropriate opportunity for comments and dissenting opinion advertising/commercial sponsorship should not raise questions about the objectivity of the published material sponsorship by national or international professional societies

How to get reviewed The editor should (1) request a journal review by using the MEDLINE Review Application Form and (2) send the review issues (according to how frequently the journal is published) to the indicated address It is also helpful to provide a subscription of the journal (no need to send CVs or letters to LSTRC members) What if the journal is available only in electronic format?  Request can be made after the journal has been accessible for at least six months (necessary >20 articles published online)  Digital archive: MEDLINE wants to ensure that users will always have access to the full text of every article - permanent archive must be in PubMed Central or another site that is acceptable to NLM  Publisher must be able to submit data electronically in XML format

The application process

The review process The LSTRC meets three times a year and ~190 titles are examined at each meeting  Requesters are not informed of the specific date  Notification is sent to the editor weeks after the meeting Rating scores range from 0 to 5  Scores 3.75 or greater required to be selected for indexing  Overall, about 20% to 25% of the titles reviewed are selected for indexing

If the journal is not selected LSTRC conducts re-examinations upon request  Titles may be re-examined after a minimum of two years following the first review date  After subsequent reviews, titles may be re-examined after a minimum of three years following the prior review date Intervals should allow editors and publishers time to implement improvements to their journal It also guarantees that the majority of the LSTRC membership will have changed by the time of the next review

If the journal is selected When will indexing begin?  If a journal is in its third volume or less when selected, MEDLINE will index the articles in all volumes  If in its fourth year or more, indexing will begin with the current year (articles in earlier volumes will not be retrospectively indexed) Congratulations! - What about other indexation databases?

Web of Science® Includes  Science Citation Index Expanded™  Social Sciences Citation Index®  Arts & Humanities Citation Index® Annually reviews over 2,000 journal titles, and selects around 10% to 12% Major criteria  timeliness of publication (three consecutive issues)  international editorial conventions (optimize retrievability of source articles)  full text (or at least bibliographic information) in English  peer review process  each article should publish information on funding source International diversity  contributing authors  editors and editorial advisory board members

Web of Science® In 2008, 700 new regional journals were included  Selection criteria: “same as for international journals although citation analyses play a somewhat different role in the outcome” Uniqueness of WoS inclusion process: analyses of citation data  citations to the journal itself  citation record of contributing authors Other databases

Helpful guidelines The ICMJE has produced the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals  The CSE has produced the Editorial Policy Statements 

Thank you.