Last updated: August 19, 2022

Reference Citation Analysis’s evaluation process for inclusion of academic journals

Reference Citation Analysis (RCA) is an artificial intelligence technology-based open multidisciplinary citation analysis database (https://www.referencecitationanalysis.com/). It was carefully designed to lead the development of wisdom, knowledge innovation, and emerging disciplines. As such, the functions of RCA include: Find an Article, Find a Category, Find a Journal, Find a Scholar, and Find an Academic Assistant. RCA updates its list of journals daily, according to relevant data including total number of articles, total citations, and Journal Article Influence Index (JAII). RCA acquires newly released abstracts and references from Crossref and adds them to the RCA database weekly. RCA also acquires abstracts and references released within the calendar year from Crossref and adds them to the RCA database monthly, and then updates the total number of articles, citations, and JAII accordingly.

The RCA’s mission, the openness and transparency of RCA evaluation, the calculation method of JAII, and the evaluation process and the inclusion principles of RCA journals are described below:

1 RCA’S MISSION

The mission of RCA is to provide a high-quality academic article evaluation service platform for various categories. At present, there are many evaluation methods for academic articles, but their calculation methods are complicated. RCA as a new generation method of evaluating the quality of academic articles, allows for making an academic evaluation of journals, scholars, institutions, drugs, medical devices, and publishers based on the JAII of each article in the citation analysis database, thus greatly enriching the academic evaluation systems across different disciplines and guiding the healthy development of the academic community.

2 OPENNESS AND TRANSPARENCY OF RCA EVALUATION

RCA is unique in its objective, impartial, fair, and transparent release of citation analysis data of important academic journals to authors and readers, including evaluation data, evaluation indexes, evaluation methods, and evaluation results, so as to ensure the reliability of academic evaluation.

3 CALCULATION METHOD OF JAII

The JAII, calculated as Total citations/Total articles, is not a 2-year nor 5-year average of citations, but is an average of citations for all articles since the journal was assigned its DOI number. Article types are not only limited to original articles and review articles, but for all types of articles. In this way, it is a more objective, fair, and transparent calculation of the academic influence index of an academic journal. Furthermore, the journal list itself is evaluated dynamically, with its bibliographic metrics being updated daily, including total number of articles, total citations, and JAII.

4 EVALUATION PROCESS OF RCA JOURNALS

The journals included in the RCA core journal list need to undergo three rounds of strict evaluation. The evaluation process is as follows:

First-round evaluation: The basic information of the journal is verified, including Journal Name, Abbreviated Title, Print ISSN, Online ISSN, Language, Category, Peer-Reviewed Journal, Ownership, Publisher, Journal Website, Editorial Board Members, Submit a Manuscript, and Indexed by.

Second-round evaluation: The activity of the journal is verified, including Total Articles, Total Citations, Cited by in F6Publishing, and JAII.

Third-round evaluation: Based on the reliability of journal information, the activity of publication data, whether the journal is a peer-reviewed journal or not, and JAII, the editorial team evaluates every journal, makes the decision to accept or reject the journal, and creates a list of core journals by discipline.

The function of the list of core academic journals is to classify journals according to categories and rank them according to various bibliometrics, including Total Views, JAII, Total Citations, Cited by in F6Publishing, Total Articles, and Number of Years.

5 INCLUSION PRINCIPLES OF RCA JOURNAL

The RCA core journal list does not include any journals with a JAII lower than 3.0. We implement dynamic evaluation inclusively for the RCA core journal list. Evaluation is initiated once an RCA-nonincluded journal receives a JAII over 3.0. Similarly, if a journal included in the RCA core journal list receives a JAII lower than 3.0, it will be dropped out at that point. The RCA core journal list is designed by publishers, scientific editors, and engineers for use by readers, authors, and editorial offices, and is free of charge to users.

Upon completion of the three rounds of rigorous evaluation on core journals by the RCA editorial team, all data of each journal are organized for public consumption according to category rank, including 2022 JAII, total citations, cited by in F6Publishing, total articles, and 2021 Journal Impact Factor™. All journal information of each journal, including Journal Name, Print ISSN, Online ISSN, Language, Free Access, Peer-Reviewed Journal, Ownership, Publisher, Journal Website, Editorial Board Members, Submit a Manuscript, and Indexed by are made available in RCA. Moreover, the citations of each journal can be then ranked in RCA by the Impact Index Per Article, Cited by in Crossref, and Cited by in F6Publishing parameters. Results analysis available for each journal includes Year Published Analysis, Article Type Analysis, Journal Title Analysis, and Category Analysis. The references of each journal are also able to be refined by Year Published and Article Type. Each reference’s citation information is displayed, including PMID, DOI, Cited by in Crossref, Impact Index Per Article, Reference Citation Analysis, and Track Full Text (Figure 1).

Figure 1 Home page of RCA’s Find a Journal service.

  The ultimate purpose of RCA is to provide an open, objective, fair, and reliable academic evaluation service platform for readers, authors, and journal editors. The RCA journal academic evaluation service platform is designed and actively maintained to address the needs of authors to select reliable journals for submission, readers to select high-quality literature for reading, and editors to track their own journal citation performance.

RCA Home Page: https://www.referencecitationanalysis.com/

RCA Journal List: https://www.referencecitationanalysis.com/SearchJournal

RCA Business Register: https://www.referencecitationanalysis.com/BusinessRegist