Background
The following checklist includes the most common considerations and decisions that have to be made when starting up a new journal. Items where the library commonly advises are marked with an asterisk.
- Journal name
- Domain name
- Aims and scope statement
- Target audience
- Business model
- Open access statement (if applicable)
- Peer review model
- ISSN (library can manage application)
- Journal subject keywords
- Abstracting and indexing
- Language of publication
- Article types (for example research papers, book reviews, etc.)
- Article formats
- Acceptance of supplementary material
Staffing
- Editor in chief
- Editorial board
- Reviewers
- Reporting (submissions, publication times, etc.)
- Publicity
- Continuity and succession: terms, recruiting reviewers, board members
Policies and documentation
- Author submission guidelines
- Author publishing agreement
- Standard license (e.g. Creative Commons)
- Copyright policy
- Peer review guidelines
- Authorship policy and dispute resolution
- Author name changes policy
- Human subjects research policy
- Research data policy
- Research ethics policy
- Conflict of interest policy
- Preservation policy
- Continuous or by-issue publication
- Publication frequency and scheduling
- Expected first issue (date)
- Submission platform/system
- Recruiting submissions
- Desk review of submissions
- Routing submissions for peer review
- Communication with authors
- Copy editing
- Production of galleys (i.e. PDF or HTML versions of accepted papers)
- Proofing
- Assigning articles to issues
- DOIs
