Scientific journals share good practices

On 22 November, the first meeting of the editorial teams of the UOC’s scientific journals was held. The editors of the publications, members of the editorial teams and administrative staff from the publications shared experiences, in anticipation of the strategic planning review to take place at the end of the year.

The content of the academic journals is principally aimed at the scientific and academic community. All published works are subject to peer review in order to guarantee their quality and relevance. These publications currently provide a means of assessing academic activity and are a key channel for disseminating the results of scientific research. They also give greater international visibility to the research, and to the experts and institutions that contribute to the publications. In 2016 nearly 300 experts and researchers from universities and research centres have collaborated in the editorial review process.

The protocol for scientific journals was approved by the Research and Innovation Committee, which is chaired by the UOC's Vice President for Strategic Planning and Research, Dr Marta Aymerich, and places emphasis on the quality of these publications and the professionalism of the teams that run and support them. Library and Learning Resources has a team responsible for implementing and complying with this protocol, and is committed to guaranteeing the quality of the scientific journals and helping to improve their positioning. During the meeting, the Library also presented the creation of a management platform for each journal and the option to access the Urkund tool as a system for detecting plagiarism.

Commitment to open access

The first joint work meeting served to underline the UOC’s commitment to open access, which is also the publication format of the scientific journals. It highlighted the degree of presence in systems that measure the number of citations and the impact of the journals: six out of the seven titles are indexed on the Web of Science (ESCI) platform, and five out of seven on Scopus. All the journals have a presence in library catalogues and specialist directories.

Seminar on good practices

At the meeting, it was also decided to schedule, for March 2017, the first edition of a seminar on good practices focusing on the peer review process, taking into consideration the ethical, academic and practical aspects of such processes. Currently, the UOC publishes the following journals: Analysis, Artnodes, BiD (University texts on library and information science), Digithum, ETHE: International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, Franquisme & Transició, and IDP: Internet, Law and Politics E-Journal.