Attention Medical Teachers, Researchers: Here is How To Check Indexing Status of Journal

It is important to know if a journal is Indexed or not before you submit a manuscript. But immediate questions are which journal is indexed? How to check whether it is indexed or not? Where to check?

Here is a quick guide for the above questions.

Indexing usually reflects the quality of a journal.

Nowadays, as per MCI/NMC guidelines, the journal which we are going to publish should be indexed especially in order to consider the publications for the faculty promotions.

Unfortunately, Medical college teachers and busy practitioners end up publishing in nonindexed journals as publication in such journals is very easy or advised by some colleagues without the proper information.

A journal may claim that it is indexed in certain bibliographic databases. However, it is an author's responsibility to check the authenticity of the claim before publishing in a particular journal.

Hence the appointing authorities/persons and MCI/NMC office of every institution also should have the basic knowledge to check the indexing status of a journal.

In this article, I attempt to describe

1) How to check the indexing status of a journal by using illustrations.

2) Brief account on different other modes of publications

Changes in indexing agencies as per the new guidelines (14.02.2022) is as below..

OLD

• SCOPUS

• PUBMED

• MEDLINE

• INDEX MEDICAUS

• INDEX COPERNICUS

NEW

• MEDLINE

• PUBMED CENTRAL

• CITATION INDEX 1

• SCIENCE CITATION INDEX 2

• EXPANDED EMBASE 3

• SCOPUS

• DIRECTORY OF OPEN ACCESS JOURNALS

NOTE:

a) In the above new list of indexing agencies like CITATION INDEX1, SCIENCE CITATION INDEX2 & EXPANDED EMBASE3 are typing errors in the new Gazette notification which is given on 14.02.2022.

b) Because these are not related to any Database bibliography.

c) CITATION INDEX may be read as SCIENCE CITATION INDEX EXPANDED/ SOCIAL SCIENCE CITATION INDEX/ ART AND HUMANITIES CITATION INDEX etc.

d) SCIENCE CITATION INDEX 2 & EXPANDED EMBASE 3 – Given as "Science citation index, Expanded Embase" in notification but it should be read as "SCIENCE CITATION INDEX EXPAND and EMBASE" separately.

e) These typing errors were also agreed by NMC (previously MCI) and given in an RTI reply.

HOW TO CHECK INDEXING STATUS IN EACH INDEXING AGENCY:

I. DIRECTORY OF OPEN ACCESS JOURNALS (DoAJ)

1. Go to https://doaj.org

  2. Uncheck the "articles" below the search box

 3. Type the title or International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) of the journal in the search box and click on the search button

 4. The indexed journal will be shown on the search result page; click on the title of the journal to view more details.

II. EMBASE:

1. Go to https://www.elsevier.com/solutions/embase-biomedical-research/embase-coverage-and-content

2.  Click on the hypertext - "Download the full list of journal titles in Embase"

3. Save the spreadsheet file (with extension.xlsx) on your computer

4. Open the file in Microsoft Excel or any other software application (e.g. WPS Office, Open Office)

5. On the spreadsheet, scroll down or search (Ctrl + F) the journal title or ISSN

6. On the corresponding row of the journal, the indexed journal shows "Yes" on the "Indexed at Embase" column

III. MEDLINE

1. Go to https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog

 2. Type the journal title or ISSN on the search box and click on the search button

3. The journal details will be shown if it is in the National Library of Medicine (NLM) Catalog

 4. Check the "Current indexing status." Indexed journal shows "Currently indexed for MEDLINE"

IV. PUBMED CENTRAL (PMC)

1. Go to https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/journals

2. Type the journal title on the search box below "Search for journals" and click on the search button

3. On the search result page, the indexed journal shows "Full" in the "Participation level" column

4. You can also check if the latest volume is present in the PMC archive by clicking on the journal title hypertext

 V. SCIENCE CITATION INDEX EXPANDED

1. Go to https://mjl.clrivate.com/home

2. Type the journal title or ISSN on the search box and click on "Search Journals"

 3. On the search result page, indexed journal title shows "Science Citation Index Expanded" against "Web of Science Core Collection"

VI. SCOPUS

1. Go to https://www.scopus.com/sources

2. Select "Title" or "ISSN" from the dropdown arrow and type the title or ISSN accordingly and click on the "Find sources" button

 3. From the search result, click on the target journal title

4. The indexed journal shows the "Scopus coverage years" (Ex: 2009 to 2019) and does not show "(coverage discontinued in Scopus)" below the years

5. If the journal name appears in the search results, it is indexed

6. Instead of entering a journal name, you can alternatively search for journals in a specific specialty. Just enter the specialty's name like "cardiology" or "pediatrics"

B) OTHER TYPES OF PUBLICATIONS

Let us also discuss some other forms publications that can be acceptable in the new guidelines,

I want to give a brief description on these as most of our colleagues have lot of queries on these modalities

 I. META-ANALYSIS:

1) A meta-analysis is a statistical analysis that combines the results of multiple scientific studies. Meta-analysis can be performed when there are multiple scientific studies addressing the same question, with each individual study reporting measurements that are expected to have some degree of error. The aim then is to use approaches from statistics to derive a pooled estimate closest to the unknown common truth based on how this error is perceived.

2) In addition to providing an overview, these papers provide a quantitative assessment of how well a treatment works or they may also provide an estimate of how much more likely a person is to develop a disease if they participate in a certain behavior

3) A key benefit of this approach is the aggregation of information leading to a higher statistical power and more robust point estimate than is possible from the measure derived from any individual study.

II. CASE SERIES:

 2) Case series may be consecutive or non-consecutive, depending on whether all cases presenting to the reporting authors over a period were included, or only a selection.

3) Case series have a descriptive study design; unlike studies that employ an analytic design, case series do not, in themselves, involve hypothesis testing to look for evidence of cause and effect.