Indexing and recognition of Diamond Open Access journals: monitoring and promotion through their visibility in a database

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to present an assessment of the positioning of "diamond" open access (OA) journals, understanding by positioning their indexing in Web of Science and Scopus, the two indexes of academic journals that form the reference framework for the evaluation of publications, as well as of the articles and the academic performance of their authors. The intention that aims to justify this work is to promote the choice of diamond open access journals as publication journals by those authors who base their journal selection criteria on the currently predominant scheme for scientific evaluation and recognition, which is based on WoS/Scopus citation indicators. Although there is abundant literature and controversy on the biases, inconveniences and distortions caused by the unilaterally quantitative evaluation procedure and filtered by bibliometric indicators, this work aims to favor the perception of diamond OA journals in order to counteract the "Gold" open access publication based on article processing charges. The source of information for the identification and retrieval of information on OA diamond journals worldwide is the Directory of Open Access Journals. To process the information, a database was created, which is available online and whose function is to update its contents annually in order to support authors in the selection of journals for publication, with the double characteristic of international indexing and the absence of APCs.