Similar to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science, Scopus, IBSS and DOAJ, SciELO SA has its own unique quality criteria.

SciELO SA’s conditions and quality checks are as follows: 

 1) The Affiliation % / Author Diversity  

The 2024 SciELO SA Advisory Committee ratified the decision of the previous committee that an affiliation percentage would not be applied to SciELO SA journals considering the following context:

• SciELO SA encourages the editorial boards to apply best-practice and ensure diversity in the geographic and institutional distribution of its authors. While an exact percentage is not expected, a 35%/65% affiliation distribution is a good guideline. In exceptional circumstances, more than 35% is acceptable.

Co-authorship is encouraged, especially between institutions. The 35% does not include authors who co-author with authors from different organisations. Example:

• The 35% refers to articles in a volume from authors of only one organisation.

• The 65% refers to articles in a volume from other organisations as well as articles that are co-authored by authors from more than one organisation.

The 35% affiliation guideline from Clarivate Analytics’ Web of      Science, Scopus, the Norwegian List, and SciELO Brazil is recommended for SciELO SA journals. Additionally, the affiliation percentage is calculated per volume, not per issue. Emphasis is placed on the need for diversity in the geographical distribution of authors. 

2) Quality Measures  

SciELO SA journals are expected to:

• maintain the excellent quality of content as assessed by the relevant ASSAf peer-review panel;

• follow established editorial practices; as well as

• implement the ASSAf as well as the SciELO guidelines on strengthening ethics in scientific publishing.

3) Current Criteria for Acceptance and New Best-Practice Criteria 

• The SciELO SA minimum criteria for acceptance of a journal onto the platform.

• Agreeing to implement additional publishing best-practice publishing criteria when introduced by the SciELO Network - see instructions to authors and additional layout requirements (to be phased in over the next 3-5 years). 

4) The SciELO SA Team may monitor

• The way a journal has implemented these guidelines and where a journal is found to depart from the affiliation and other guidelines, the journal will be advised accordingly; and

•   The number of views each journal attracts using the SciELO statistics module. Where a journal is under-performing the journal will be alerted to this.

Queries can be referred to Louise van Heerden, the SciELO SA Operations Manager or Susan Veldsman, the Director of Scholarly Publishing at ASSAf.