The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), DOAJ, the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA), and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) are scholarly organisations that have collaborated to identify principles of transparency and best practice for scholarly publications. This is the fourth version of a work in progress (published September 15 2022).
The Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing outline guidelines for ethical and transparent scholarly publishing. Key principles include clear website information, copyright and licensing policies, publication ethics, peer review processes, access details, ownership transparency, editorial team information, and business practices. The guidelines emphasise the importance of integrity, accessibility, and inclusivity in scholarly publishing.
The Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing should apply to all published content, including special issues and conference proceedings. Where practices deviate from the standards outlined, editors must transparently communicate the procedures that the journal follows.
The Open Access Spectrum was developed by SPARC in collaboration with PLOS and OASPA. This tool displays the core components of open access across a spectrum indicating how closed or open a journal is based upon its policies on reader rights, reuse rights, copyrights, author posting rights, automatic posting, and machine readability.
A coalition of scholarly publishers and associations collaborated to create this short checklist for authors to refer to when evaluating a journal as a possible place of publication for his research. By asking a few short questions and evaluating the journal according to the checklist, authors can be assured that the journal they are considering, whether subscription based or open access, will be one of quality, rigor, and respect.
Think: Ask yourself, can you trust this journal with your research? Does the journal publish research you would read yourself?
Check: Is the organization or publisher of the journal identifiable? Can you contact them easily? For journals with publication fees (color charges, Open Access) - are the fees clearly listed on the publisher's website? Reputable publishers should list their fees clearly and publicly. Do you know the names or reputations of any of the editorial board members? Are the articles indexed in services you use within your subject area?
Submit: If you can answer yes to these questions, then submit!