Scholarly Indexing is at the core of research. It allows researchers to find academic research and content online.
Because the internet can be a source of information that might not be reliable, scholarly indexing allows researchers to trust in the reliability of the content.
It has been vetted. It can be trusted.
But what is scholarly indexing?
Understanding scholarly indexing
Because one of the great challenges when it comes to indexing is being discoverable. These indexes can help authors who publish the research, as well as the people looking for that research.
Because most authors aim for the broad dissemination of their research, indexing is very important to them. However, scholarly indexing can be a challenging and complicated process.
While authors have, no doubt, heard of many different indexing sources (PubMed, SCOPUS, and Clarivate, to name a few), there might be a great deal of confusion on how to approach this process.
What is scholarly indexing?
In a way, scholarly indexing is similar to a SERP (or “search engine results page”) result. It is a way for research to be tracked, accessible, and importantly, searchable.
The process of organizing and cataloguing publications allows indexing to be a crucial tool for researchers. Because research publications might be in journals or books, or even in conference papers, indexing can save time in the search for relevant information.
In a nutshell, scholarly indexing is the creation of a database that can be checked using detailed information.
What are the benefits of scholarly indexing?
There are many different benefits to this kind of indexing. First of all, it ensures that the list of catalogued publications are reliable and that they are of a high quality. Peer review is the standard process to ensure this degree of quality.
But you might ask yourself why it is in the interest of an index to ensure a high quality?
Like academic journals, indexing sources aim to maintain a high standard. Failure to do so can result in a hit to their reputation. Above, we mentioned PubMed, SCOPUS, and Clarivate, but there are others. Some deal with sciences, others with humanities, and others deal with social sciences.
There are millions upon millions of journals and they all want to be cited. Finding a reputable indexing service is crucial.
What to keep in mind if you’re an author
Getting your work indexed doesn’t usually just happen. It takes hard work, but it might also be something that a journal will take on for your.
Obviously, you want to ensure that this question is addressed before you submit your research. Knowing the answer to this question in advance can help you plan out your next steps.
Remember that different indexing criteria might apply, depending on where you want to index your work.
Generally though, you can be sure that a few specific things will be required.
For example, the journal that your published research winds up in will need an ISSN (or international standard serial number) and a DOI (digital object identifier). In addition, information about the peer review policies of the journal as well as a copyright policy. These are not all the details that might be needed.
Scholarly indexing takes time
Getting your work indexed is a process and it will take time. Making sure that you account for this is critical. In order to make sure that you’re prepared for the challenges, we plan on releasing more content on this topic to ensure that you’re ready for it.