Indexing and Reviewing: Concept and Its Practice

Indexing is a crucial factor that helps journal to reach out a larger audience and achieve reputation by standing out from the rest that are crowding in publication space. This article helps gaining an understanding on the concept of indexing, its history, its practices, the major indexing agencies and the indexing parameters. The paper also discusses on the different review methods adopted by journals and the concept of open access journals.


Introduction
"Words are powerful than some noises", says Billie Eilish and indexing is the one which helps a journal to make noise and stand out from the rest of the journals in the publishing space.
Indexing helps a journal getting its publication indexed by one or more leading indexing agencies. Indexing is a systematic process of arranging the list of cited articles identified as SMART MOVES JOURNAL IJELLH e-ISSN: 2582-3574 p-ISSN: 2582-4406 VOL. 8, ISSUE 5, MAY 2020 www.ijellh.com 100 source and each cited article in turn accompanied by a list of citing articles identified as reference. An indexed journal is considered to have a better quality and reputation as compared to non-indexed journals most of the times. However, sometimes an indexed journal need not necessarily have a better quality than a non-indexed journal. This is because most of the established journals refused to apply and undergo a long and tight process to be indexed.

Methodology
In the current article, a detailed investigation of the concept of indexing, its history, the different indexing agencies and indexing parameters has been made. The parameters set up by the major indexing agencies has been analysed. The different types of review methods followed by different journals has been studied to understand the review process. An in-depth study on open access journal with an emphasis on funding mechanism of open access journal has been made.

History of indexing
Everything has its own history so does the indexing. The concept of indexing was formed from the bits and pieces of the information that has been accumulated over the years.
The history of indexing dates back to 7 th Century where Indexing was used to list the Concordances to Bible. Indexing was also used for subject indexes to canonical law in the 11 th century. In, 12 th century, a form of citation index was found in Hebrew religious literature.
However, the concept of indexing gained its prominence in the fifteenth century with the contrivance of printing. The first printed book with indexes was released in 1460's. Later, in the 16 th century, i.e., in 1544, the first printed Biblical concordance was published. The first index to the English language in 18 th century was "A dictionary of the English language" by Samuel Johnson released in 1755. Indexing got its notability with the advent of Computers. The computerization had a positive impact and helped in the process of indexing by organizing and recording the huge amount of database. However, it also has its own drawbacks such as the quality is compromised. The information available is not subject to any kind of screening or quality check. Currently, Indexing is one of the important aspects while considering the prestige of a journal.

Indexing agencies
For a journal to be indexed, it has to pass through a review process of certain requirements done by a journal indexer. There are many indexing agencies available at present.
While some indexing agencies such as Scopus are provided by publishers, others such as PubMed are affiliated with institutions like National institute of health (NIH) Irrespective of the indexing agency, for inclusion of the journal in the database (indexing agency) the journal has to formally apply and fulfill all the parameters set by the indexing agency The indexing agencies can only index titles or only the abstract and/or references or full articles.
Once a journal is indexed by the indexing agency, the journal is immediately made available to all users of that database. The major indexing agencies are:

Web of Science
Web of Science is an interdisciplinary database that covers all scientific areas. It is one of the most reputed database that covers best international and regional journals, proceedings, books and patents that are only in English language. The articles in the database are entered in a uniform fashion with the details such as the name of the author, the title of the paper and the journal and reliably sorted out latest name. Thus, the articles of interest can be easily retrieved by the reader.
The Web of Science has three flagship Citation Indexes and they are: • the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) earlier known as SCI (Science Citation Index), • the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI).
• A new edition, Emerging Sources Citation Index.
Approximately 7,000+ academic and research institutions, funding organizations, publishing organizations and national governments are maintained by Web of science worldwide.

Scopus
Scopus is one of the major indexing databases owned by Elsevier that contains abstracts and citations for academic journal articles covering approximately 21,000 titles. The peer reviewed scientific journals, books and conference proceedings in the fields of science,

Eigenfactor Score:
The impact factor gives equal value on citations irrespective of the influence and quality of journal, to overcome this, Bergstom devised Eigenfactor score (ES), which gives higher values to journals with a good quality and influence. An iterative ranking algorithm system is employed to calculate the ES and it is calculated based on the frequency with which the journal is visited by an author and expressed in percentage. The ES is calculated every year for an interval of 5 years. SMART MOVES JOURNAL IJELLH e-ISSN: 2582-3574 p-ISSN: 2582-4406 VOL. 8, ISSUE 5, MAY 2020 www.ijellh.com 106

SCImago Journal Rank:
SCImago Journal Rank is a computerized ranking system devised by SCImago research group using Scopus. It is a ranking system that uses an algorithm to assign a higher rank to quality journals with more number of citations. The SJR is published in SCImago Journal. This bibliometric index was designed by Google scholar to gauge the publications. It is a facile straightforward metric that is measured by the total number of articles with at least 10 citations.

h c index:
The contemporary h index was proposed by Sidiopoulis which gives weightage to newer articles than the older ones thereby giving importance luminous young researchers who has made significant contribution with small number of article. The h c index is calculated by multiplying the number of citations with four and then dividing it by the number of years of publication. SMART MOVES JOURNAL IJELLH e-ISSN: 2582-3574 p-ISSN: 2582-4406 VOL. 8, ISSUE 5, MAY 2020 www.ijellh.com 108 6. Reviewing process "True intuitive expertise is learned from prolonged experience with good feedback on mistakes." as said by Daniel Kahneman. Reviewing process is a feedback that is given by the reviewers for the authors to improve on the quality of the article. Reviewing is the most important scientific evaluation undertaken by the journals and indexing agencies. Reviewing process is broadly classified as pre-publication and post publication review.

Peer review
Peer review is the most common reviewing process that assess the quality and validate the content of the article and in turn broadens the network with the research community. The peer review process was first conducted by a journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in the year 1618. Peer review process is broadly categorized into open review and closed review which includes single blind, double blind and triple blind review.

Single blind review:
This is the most popular type of peer review process. In the single review, the author will not know who the reviewer is but the reviewer knows who the author is. This method allows the reviewer to research on the previous work done by the author and also allows the reviewer to provide feedback without fear of criticism. However, the identity of author might influence the reviewer and sometimes use their anonymity to make discordant comments.

Double blind review:
In double blind review neither the author nor the reviewer knows each other. The double-blind review process minimizes the reviewer bias and conflict of interest. But because of the author anonymity the reviewer cannot research on the previous work done by the author. In this review process, neither the author nor reviewer know each other and the author is not known to the editor as well. The triple blind review process has reduced review bias as the article is anonymized at the stage of article submission. Just like double blind review process, as the author is anonymized, it is not possible to get the information on the previously done work by the author. www.ijellh.com 110

Conclusion
Indexing is a marker of journal quality which enhances the availability, readership and visibility of a journal. It will help the journal to reach out a larger number of readers thereby increasing the citation number of the article. The enhanced citation number in turn will have an impact on the journal's reputation as a reliable source of high-quality information. The reviewing process is an important criterion for publishing a quality article in a journal. In conclusion, this article helps the upcoming researches to understand the basic concept of indexing and reviewing.