The group of characteristics, qualitative or quantitative, in the publication of a scientific journal, must be regulated or normalized to value and measure the condition and situation of a journal in its institution, country, region, and worldwide. 

These regulated characteristics constitute the editorial quality criteria which are used as a guide by a scientific journal. 

These criteria are generally classified according to the parameters that can be valued, especially parameters according to the way that it is published, and not in the content of a scientific publication:

  • Content and presentation criteria 
  • Scientific content criteria
  • Editorial management criteria
  • Technical and/or technological criteria

The presentation criteria regulates the information about the journal: definition, range, nature, topic, the nomenclature of presentation, journal’s directory, etc.

The scientific content criteria normalizes the characteristics that manifest the scientific character of the journal, such as regularity, evaluation peer review process, editorial committee members, scientific content in the fascicles, etc.

 The editorial management criteria regulates the defined process by the Editorial Committee of the journal as part of their editorial policy. These processes include licensing, exploitation rights, self-archiving policies, number of articles per year that must be published, registers and indexes, codes of ethics, etc.

 While the technical and/or technological criteria are based on the publication platform, in the content of the journal, and in the use of technology for its visibility and dissemination. For example: the website of the journal, use of editorial manager, publication formats, interoperability protocols, etc. 

These criteria keep on adjusting to the constant evaluation of scientific journals. Previously, the greatest emphasis was given to the information presented by the journal, to the text that accompanied the content of its fascicles. Currently, the rigor with which the journal supports its editorial processes, and the scientific character with which the journal manages its contents are constituted on the basis of the evaluation of the editorial criteria. Also, an important role is given to the technological development that supports a scientific publication. 

The valid editorial criteria with which the Scientific Information System Redalyc evaluates its journals both for their inclusion in the Redalyc Index and in the evaluation processes that it carries out regularly are detail in the following. Click here.