23 June 2022
Hindawi‘s journal reports showcase a wide range of publishing metrics, from submission through peer review and discovery – providing greater insight into the performance and makeup of their journals.
The reports were created in partnership with DataSalon and are publicly available through Hindawi.com from each journal’s main page by following the “see full report” link underneath the journal metrics. See an example here: https://www.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/journal-report/
This first phase of the new journal reports gives greater insight into acceptance rates and decision times, including the median peer review time and the number of reviews per article. Alongside traditional metrics, such as citations and article views, the reports provide the geographic distribution of authors, editors, and reviewers. The final section includes metrics about openness of metadata (such as abstracts and citations openly provided to CrossRef), the machine readability of content and the use of persistent identifiers (such as ORCID).
By sharing this information, Hindawi aims to help researchers make better-informed decisions when choosing where to publish, instead of them relying on limited and often problematic indicators.
Catriona MacCallum, Director of Open Science at Hindawi, commented: “Hindawi is committed to taking an evidence-informed approach to publishing. By starting to unbundle and share data on our different services, we aim to unravel the ‘black box’ of publishing and open it up to independent scrutiny. Having a more transparent and collaborative approach to our workflows will also help fuel innovation in publishing and further support researchers, funders and institutions who are committed to Open Science.”
Mathias Astell, Chief Journal Development Officer at Hindawi, added: “These reports mark an important step in increasing transparency of journal performance and makeup – helping researchers, institutions, funders and publishing partners to have a clearer understanding of the value a journal is providing. We believe that clearly presenting the geographic representation of our journals will start to help subvert historical geographical biases in publishing. We also believe that openly sharing the metrics that actually make a difference to authors’ experience is vital in moving away from the problematic ways of traditionally assessing journals. This is the first iteration of our new reports and we are planning to further increase transparency and openness through future phases.”
Nick Andrews, DataSalon, Managing Director, commented: “Hindawi are taking bold steps to make publicly available detailed metrics for their journals.”