Criteria for inclusion of scientific publication channels
To be included at level 1 and count as a scientific publication channel (journals, series and publishers) in the Norwegian financial system, the following requirements must be fulfilled:
Journal/Series must
- Be identified with a valid ISSN, confirmed by The International ISSN Register (demand from 2014)
- Have an academic editorial board (or an equivalent) primarily consisting of researchers from universities, institutes or organizations that do research
- Have established procedures for external peer review
- Have a national or international authorship, meaning that maximum 2/3 of the authors can belong to the same institution
Publishers must
- Be organized in an editorial way to publish publications in accordance with the definition of a scientific publication
- Have a scientific publishing program with external advisors and aiming for distribution to scholars and research institutions
- Have a national or international authorship, meaning that maximum 2/3 of the authors can belong to the same institution
- Publish ISBN-titles. Publishers that only publish ISSN-titles will not be accepted since ISSN-titles must be suggested as individual publication channels.
In addition, the publication channel must overall be regarded as recommendable and relevant for the Norwegian research community.
You can find the definition and established criteria for approval of new publication channels in the Norwegian Register, in chapter 4 of the report A Bibliometric Model for Performance-based Budgeting of Research Institutions (2004).
Authorship
To be approved as a scientific publication channel, the authorship must be national or international; it cannot be local. When more than 2/3 of the authors are from the same institution, we consider the authorship as local.
We determines the authorship for journals and series by observing the issues published the two last years, and for publishers the backlist of scientific titles for the two last years. We only consider original publications (translated literature that already has been published, is not considered).
We do not accept local authorship, because it is questionable whether external peer review can function satisfactorily for publication channels that primarily represents an institution’s own researchers. National authorship is required as a minimum if external peer review is to function properly in a scientific publication channel.
Peer review
To be approved, the publication channel must have routines for external peer review. Peer review must always be conducted before publication and at least one reviewer, an expert in the field, must be without affiliations to the publisher and the author. In addition, the peer review must relate to the academic originality and quality of the work.
Documentation on peer review should therefore describe the process: What will happen when the publication channel receives a contribution, who reviews it and how does the publication channel conduct the peer review.
Professional journals and cultural magazines
We do not approve professional journals and cultural magazines as scientific publication channels. Professional journals are journals aimed at (not-scientific) subject groups within specific professions or social sectors. Cultural magazines are journals aimed at a general audience with information and reflections about cultural and social questions, or journals that give space for presentation and analysis of the arts and cultural heritage protection (according to the definition from Arts Council Norway).
Some professional journals have subdivisions with peer reviewed scientific articles. Norwegian and Nordic professional journals indexed by Norart and organized in peer-reviewed subdivisions can be approved as scientific publication channels. Journals from outside the Nordic countries cannot be approved, as it would be difficult to identify the status of the articles.
Conferences and proceedings
We treat contributions to conferences and symposiums the same way as articles in scientific journals or series. A contribution must be published in an approved publication channel in order to count as scientific publication.
The conference in itself cannot be registered as an independent publication channel. If published with ISBN, the publisher of the proceedings must be approved as a scientific publication channel. If published with ISSN, the ISSN-series where the proceedings are published, must be approved as a scientific publication channel.
On some occasions, the conference does not have ISSN-series, and publish proceedings through the institutions that arrange the conference. The publisher may then change from year to year. Such contributions will not count as scientific publication.
Series
Series can have both ISSN and ISBN. We consider series as independent publication channels if they have ISSN. You can submit series with ISSN to the register the same way as journals. When you register the publication in Cristin, you must use the ISSN-series as the publication channel, not the publisher.
In some cases, the articles are published in ISSN-series not considered as scientific publication channels, at the same time as the publisher of the series is approved. You must still use the ISSN-series as publication channel, not the publisher. Such publications do not count as scientific publication.
Series without ISSN cannot be registered as independent publication channels. You must then use the publisher of the series as publication channel. Monographic series are not considered. In those cases, the level of the publisher will be decisive.
Next step
Submit publication channels and see more information at
