Systematize information on journal policies and practices - A call to action - Leiden Madtrics

In most research fields, journals play a dominant role in the scholarly communication system. However, the availability of systematic information on the policies and practices of journals, for instance with respect to peer review and open access publishing, is surprisingly limited and scattered. Of course we have the journal impact factor, as well as a range of other citation-based journal metrics (e.g., CiteScore, SNIP, SJR, and Eigenfactor), but these metrics provide information only on one very specific aspect of a journal. As is widely recognized, there is a strong need for a wider range of information on journals (see for instance here and here). Such information is for instance needed to facilitate responsible evaluation practices, to promote open access publishing, and to improve journal peer review.