Index

To ensure that Impact Compass Journals achieves their goal of disseminating impactful research, we prioritize effective indexing practices. Indexing is essential because it makes academic papers discoverable; even the most groundbreaking research can be difficult to find if not correctly indexed. Online discovery is the primary way readers find articles, and this relies greatly on content discovery in various indexing and abstracting platforms.

Why Indexing Matters

Increased Visibility: Indexing helps a journal achieve its main purpose of being accessible to a wide audience.
Improved Reputation: Accessibility, in turn, improves the journal’s reputation as a reliable source of high-quality information in its field. Journals that are indexed are believed to be of higher quality than those that are not.
Broader Readership: Being indexed in well-known databases helps increase a journal’s readership because database research is the first activity researchers undertake as part of their study.

Basic Indexing Standards

Impact Compass adheres to key publication requirements to ensure inclusion in academic indexes. These include:

ISSN: Registering for an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) is one of the first steps for journals. An ISSN is a persistent identifier for each title and offers a reliable way to distinguish one journal from another, as well as identifying the publishing organization.
DOIs: Using Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs).
Publication Schedule: Maintaining a defined publication schedule.
Copyright Policy: Having a clear copyright policy.
Metadata: Providing metadata at the article level. Ideally, all articles should include key fields in HTML meta tags and XML metadata

Enhancing SEO for Greater Discoverability

To further improve the chances of Impact Compass Journals articles being found online, the journal employs Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategies. SEO helps improve the quantity of organic traffic to a website from search engines and helps content rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). When articles rank highly in search results, they’re more likely to be found, read, and cited.Key SEO practices include:

Rich Metadata: Adding rich, machine-readable metadata to all articles. For content to appear in online search results, it must be accessible to human and machine readers.
Linked Citations: Linking article citations to their sources, ideally using DOIs to ensure the links persist. The more links there are to related content, the better.
Sitemaps: Adding published articles to a sitemap, which is a machine-readable list of a website’s most important pages. Sitemaps help search engines find new pages on websites and identify updates to old pages more quickly.

The Indexing Process

To be indexed, Impact Compass Journals applies to selected databases, providing relevant documents and evidence. Each index has different criteria, but they generally check that the journal meets basic scholarly publishing standards. These may include checking that the journal has a clear scope, provides information on peer review, copyright, and ethics, has a clear editorial board page with names and titles, issues Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs), and publishes article-level metadata.

Maintaining High Standards

Impact Compass Journals is committed to maintaining smooth and efficient journal processes to ensure eligibility for indexing. The process of getting indexed is similar to manuscript submission and peer review: journals submit their documents and wait for their application to be reviewed by the database.

The Indexing Process

Maintaining High Standards

Impact Compass Joutrnals is committed to maintaining smooth and efficient journal processes to ensure eligibility for indexing. The process of getting indexed is similar to manuscript submission and peer review: journals submit their documents and wait for their application to be reviewed by the database.

Archiving of Old Meta Data Policy

Many journals use archiving systems like LOCKSS and CLOCKSS to create distributed archives among participating libraries. These systems facilitate the creation of permanent archives of the journal for preservation and restoration purposes. Impact Compass Journals employ similar strategies for digital archiving to ensure long-term preservation. This involves archiving all published articles by following a policy of 'Long-term Preservation' in PKP/PN, as well as preserving articles in other Journal Repository. The journal also allows authors to deposit versions of their work in an institutional or other repository of their choice such as Academia and Research Gate.

Repository Policy

TImpact Compass Journals are committed to ensuring the long-term availability and accessibility of its published content. To achieve this, Impact Compass Journals implements a comprehensive repository policy.

Digital Archiving and Preservation: Impact Compass Journals digitally preserves all published scholarly content. The journal submits metadata to LOCKSS and other repositories to ensure content remains available, even in case of data loss.

Authors Self Archiving: Impact Compass Journals supports authors' rights to share their work. Authors can deposit pre-prints in any repository without embargo. Authors can deposit the accepted manuscript version (post-print) in their institution's repository or central repositories such as PubMed Central without any embargo period. Authors may also share the final published version or accepted version on personal websites or blogs immediately after publication. Proper attribution to the original publication on the Impact Compass Journals website is encouraged.

This policy aligns with open access principles, promoting broad sharing and adaptation of research while ensuring authors receive proper credit. All articles published in Impact Compass Journals are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license