Our Commitment to Fair Research Assessment: Aligning with DORA Principles
At Academic Insight Press, we believe that scholarly research must be evaluated based on its intrinsic merit, not by proxy metrics that can be misleading. We therefore strongly support the principles outlined in the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA).
While we are in the process of becoming a formal signatory, our editorial policies and practices are already actively guided by DORA's core recommendations. We are committed to fostering a publishing environment where the quality and impact of scientific content are the ultimate measures of worth.
In alignment with the DORA philosophy, we are implementing the following practices across all our journals, including Access to Justice in the Middle East:
1. Reforming Our Use of Journal Metrics
We are committed to greatly reducing the emphasis on the Journal Impact Factor as a promotional tool. We will instead present a richer, more contextualized view of journal performance by providing a variety of journal-based metrics (e.g., 5-year impact factor, EigenFactor, SCImago Journal Rank, h-index, and editorial/publication times).
2. Championing Article-Level Metrics
To encourage a fundamental shift toward assessment based on the scientific content of an article, we will make available a range of article-level metrics. This allows authors and institutions to evaluate the impact of individual works, independent of the journal in which they are published.
3. Promoting Transparent Authorship
We champion responsible authorship practices and will provide clear and detailed information about the specific contributions of each author, utilizing frameworks like the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) to ensure individual contributions are properly acknowledged.
4. Ensuring Open Citations
In our commitment to Open Science, we will remove reuse limitations on reference lists in the research articles we publish. All bibliographic data will be made openly available under the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0), allowing for unrestricted reuse and discovery.
5. Valuing Comprehensive Scholarship
We believe rigorous scholarship should not be constrained by arbitrary limits. We will therefore remove or reduce constraints on the number of references in research articles and mandate the citation of primary literature over reviews where appropriate, to give proper credit to the original researchers.
6. Empowering Our Editors and Reviewers
We actively guide our journal editors and peer reviewers to assess manuscripts based on their intrinsic scientific merit, originality, and quality. We reinforce that evaluations must not be influenced by a journal's prestige, an author's publication history, or institutional affiliations, ensuring a fair and unbiased peer-review process.
By adopting these principles, Academic Insight Press aligns itself with the global movement to improve research assessment. We believe these steps are essential for building a more transparent and equitable scholarly ecosystem, and we are dedicated to this path as we move toward formalizing our support for DORA.
Journal Metrics and Indexing: Our Path to Visibility
Academic Insight Press is committed to transparency regarding the performance and visibility of our journals. This page will serve as the official, up-to-date resource for all of AJME's core metrics, citation data, and indexing information as soon as it becomes available.
As a new journal, we are currently in the process of building the consistent publication history required for evaluation by major indexing services. We are dedicated to creating a high-quality, impactful publication, and achieving recognition from key scholarly databases is a core part of our strategy.
Our Indexing Roadmap
Our application and inclusion strategy is focused and progressive.
1) Foundational Indexing (Our Immediate Priority):
We are actively preparing our application for inclusion in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Securing a place in DOAJ is a primary goal, as it will certify our adherence to the highest standards of peer review, open access licensing, and ethical publishing practices. Simultaneously, given our journal's specific focus, we intend to apply for inclusion in HeinOnline, a premier database for legal and historical research, to ensure our content is accessible to the core community of legal scholars and practitioners.
2) Major Scholarly Databases (Our Long-Term Vision):
Our long-term vision for AJME is to achieve indexing in the world's leading citation databases, including Scopus and Web of Science. We recognize that meeting the rigorous standards for inclusion requires a sustained track record of high-quality, impactful publications with a diverse international authorship. We are dedicated to building this track record diligently over the coming years.
We are excited about the journey ahead and are committed to making AJME a valuable and highly visible resource in its field. We will update this page to reflect every milestone we achieve. We thank our authors, reviewers, and readers for their trust and support as we grow.