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Latindex Catalogue, set on line last March 2002, covers descriptive and content information which has been added to that offered by the Directory. Titles entered in Catalogue entail a subgroup of Latindex Directory. These titles have been chosen and ranked by each affiliated country, in conformity with international criteria of publishing quality, previously tested and concurred by Latindex System as a body. The selection criteria listing as well as its implementation procedure is available to viewers (please, consult our Methodological texts). The Catalogue offers, as well as the Directory, dissimilar consultation modalities: either through lists (title, subject, country, publishing and indexing) or by record's subject areas. Besides the publishing features listing accomplished by the journal, it is offered through each title an image of its cover and a very short depiction of its targets and scopes. This enables users to gain privileged information access on scientific and technical journals of highest ranked publishing quality which are issued in countries taking part in the System. It is significant to point out that the Catalogue is not visualized as journals evaluation system, but as a specialized system of information regarding a subgroup of the total journals been produced in the region. Its core target is to afford systematized information which can be easily consulted by anybody and possesses great usefulness for authors, readers, experts and scientific activity's assessors, librarians, bibliographical information providers, editors and periodicals dealers. At this time, the Catalogue contains a few more than 2000 academic journals titles issued in the following participant countries: Argentine, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Chile, Spain, Mexico, Peru, Puerto Rico, Portugal, Uruguay and Venezuela. Articles published in several journals that have been recorded in the Directory, are indexed in the following national and regional databases, related to Latindex. CLASE (Latin-American social science and humanities journals) http://dgb.unam.mx/clase.html PERIÓDICA (Latin-American science and technology journals) http://dgb.unam.mx/periodica.html LILACS (Latin-American Health Sciences journals) http://bases.bireme.br/cgi-bin/wxislind.exe/iah/online/?IsisScript=iah/iah.xis&base=LILACS&lang=e ISOC (Spanish social science and humanities journals) http://bddoc.csic.es:8080/isoc.do;jsessionid=DA81830D702D14B6441065C0D4BF2056 ICYT (Spanish science and technology journals) http://bddoc.csic.es:8080/inicioBuscarSimple.do;jsessionid=DA81830D702D14B6441065C0D4BF2056?tabla= docu&bd=ICYT&estado_formulario=show IME (Spanish Medicine journals) http://bddoc.csic.es:8080/inicioBuscarSimple.do;jsessionid=DA81830D702D14B6441065C0D4BF2056?tabla= docu&bd=IME&estado_formulario=show A significant amount of them are also available in full text in: SciELO www.scielo.org RedALYC http://www.redalyc.org/ E-Journal http://www.ejournal.unam.mx/

Methodology being used in its building

Latindex System Journals Catalogue affords information on a whole array of periodicals features in conformity with parameters of editorial quality previously arranged. These parameters are the result of the work developed by a local group of experts taking part of Latindex System. Based on the acquaintanceship possessed on our publications by Latindex associates, from long ago professionally responsible for important national and regional databases and previous analysis of diverse classification and evaluation procedures carried out in the last decades throughout Latin-American and at global scale, an initial judgment list was produced which was trialed at being implemented to sundry samples on each one of the collaborating centers. As a result from this test, the judgments list has been defined as follows:

Basic Characteristics
1	Editorial Staff	Corpo Editorial
2	Content	Conteúdo
3	One year minimal seniority	Antiguidade mínima 1 ano
4	Authors Identification	Identificação dos autores
5	Edition Place	Local de edição
6	Publishing House	Entidade editora
7	Director	Director
8	Head Department	Endereço
Characteristic of Journal Presentation
9	Title pages	Página de rosto
10	Periodicity Reference	Menção de periodicidade
11	Index	Sumário
12	Bibliographic Heading at the article beginning	Lembrete bibliográfico
13	Bibliographic Heading on each page	Lembrete bibliográfico em cada página
14	Members of Editorial Board	Membros do conselho editorial
15	Members of Editorial Board Institutional Membership	Afiliação dos membros do conselho editorial
16	Authors Affiliations	Afiliação dos autores
17	Reception and Original Papers Acceptance	Recepção e aceitação dos originais
Characteristics of management and publishing policy
18	ISSN	ISSN
19	Journal Definition	Descrição da revista
20	Selection System for Original Full Texts	Sistema de seleção dos originais
21	Outer Assessors	Avaliadores externos
22	Outer Authors	Autores externos
23	Publishing Opening	Abertura editorial
24	Information Services	Serviços de informação
25	Periodicity Fulfillment	Cumprimento da periodicidade
Characteristics of the contents
26	Original Scientific Content	Conteúdo científico
27	Authors Guidance	Instruções aos autores
28	Making of Bibliographic References	Elaboração de refêrencias bibliográficas
29	Originality Requirement	Originalidade dos trábalhos
30	Summary	Resumo
31	Summary in two languages	Resumos em duas línguas
32	Key Words	Palavras-chave
33	Key Words in two languages	Palavras-cheve em duas línguas

These features are endorsed through the revision of the last three fascicles that have been recently issued from each journal. In order to be registered to the Catalogue, journals must fulfill with all basic characteristics and at least with 17 of remainder listed parameters. In this respect, each journal should cover at least 75% of publishing quality characteristics that have been set by Latindex worldwide.

Evaluation of e-journals

Introduction

In every country, we are witnessing the growing presence of available full text scientific journals on the Internet. The movement behind the Open Access philosophy is becoming more important every day, by making open access to texts more frequent. Also, the scientific publishers of the more important journal generally offer the texts of their journals in e-format besides the printed version, be it as a supplement to the printed subscription or independently.

Latindex, taking into account the transformations that are taking place in the scientific community as well as its paradigms, and as an answer to the growing number of scientific and technical journals that have chosen electronic publishing, has defined some publishing quality criteria that already consider those defined for printed journals. These criteria are applicable to any journal notwithstanding their support, and they incorporate some other criteria specifically designed for e-journals. The criteria that have been proposed were elaborated by a work group that, in its experimental phase, applied them to 39 journals from four countries obtaining positive results.

If journals are always a reality undergoing continuous changes, the e-journals are even more so. The experience in applying the proposed criteria must be extended, always keeping in mind future readjustments according to what we learn from their application.

List of criteria

E-JOURNALS: Basic characteristics

1	Reference to the Publishing staff. The existence of a publishing board, editorial board or scientific authority must be mentioned. In the case of e-journals, the reference must be included directly in the first page or through a link that will allow the user to access the information by clicking on it.
2	Scientific content. In order to qualify, at least 40% of the documents published in the issues to be evaluated must consist of: a) original articles; b) technical articles; c) information stemming from congresses; d) letters to the editor or short articles; e) revision articles, state of the art, etc. In every case, the technical or scientific interest must prevail.
3	Steady generation of contents. Generation of new contents in a single year must be proved.
4	Author identification. The works must be signed by the authors with name and family name or institutional authorship must be declared.
5	Publishing entity. The entity or publishing institution of the journal must appear in a visible place. It must be totally dependable. It must be included directly in the first page or through a link that will allow the user to access the information by clicking on it. The email address must also be included.
6	Reference to the director. The journal must include the name of the director of the publication, its editorial authority or its equivalent.
7	Reference to the journal‘s URL. It must appear in the main page of the journal.
8	Reference to the journal‘s address. The mailing address or the e-mail address of the journal‘s management must appear in a visible spot, for subscriptions, exchanges, works submission and other purposes.

E-JOURNALS: Characteristics of presentation of the journal

9	Navigation and functionality. The journal must have a navigation structure that will allow access to summaries and articles through a maximum of three clicks.
10	Reference to frequency of publication. Or in its case, a declaration of continued frequency of publication.
11	Access to contents. It must facilitate the presence of the summary or that of an access structure regarding the contents.
12	Access to content history. For all the time that the journal has been published, or for at least the past three years.
13	Bibliographic heading at the beginning of the article. The journal qualifies if the bibliographic heading appears at the beginning of each article and identifies the source.
14	Members of the editorial board. The journal qualifies if the names of the members of its editorial board are included.
15	Institutional affiliation of the members of the editorial board. The journal qualifies if the names of the institutions to which the members of the editorial board are affiliated, are given. It is not enough to only include the name of the country.
16	Authors‘ affiliation. The body to which the author is affiliated must always be included.
17	Reception and acceptance of originals. The journal qualifies only if both dates are indicated.

E-JOURNALS: Characteristics of management and publishing policy

18	ISSN. E-journals must have their own ISSN.
19	Definition of the journal. The journal must include a reference to its objective, subjects covered and/or the public it is aimed to.
20	Peer Review system. The journal must include the selection procedure regarding the articles it publishes.
21	External evaluators. It must be mentioned if the journal‘s arbitration system resorts to external evaluators belonging to other bodies or institutions.
22	External authors. At least 50% of the works published must be written by authors not belonging to the publishing body. In the case of journals published by associations, authors will be considered as belonging to the publishing body if they are members of the directing body of the association or if they appear in the journal‘s staff.
23	Editorial openness. At least two thirds of the editorial board must not belong to the publishing body.
24	Abstracting & Indexing services. The journal qualifies if it is included in any abstracting & indexing service. This field qualifies both if the database is mentioned by the journal itself or if it is added by the qualifier.
25	Frequency compliance. The journal qualifies if it complies with the frequency declaration set forth in criterion No. 10.

E-JOURNALS: Characteristics of content

26	Original content. The journal qualifies if at least 40% of the articles are original research, scientific communication or creation works.
27	Instructions for the authors. The journal qualifies if instructions for the authors regarding the submission of original material or summaries are included in at least one issue per year.
28	Elaboration of bibliographic references. The guidelines for the elaboration of bibliographic references must be indicated in the instructions for the authors.
29	Requirements regarding originality. The journal qualifies if this condition regarding works submitted for publication is mentioned in the presentation of the journal or in its instructions for the authors.
30	Abstract. An abstract in the original language of the work must be attached to every article.
31	Abstract in two languages. The journal qualifies if abstracts in the original language of the work and in a second language are included.
32	Keywords. The journal qualifies if keywords or their equivalent are included in the original language of the work.
33	Keywords in two languages. In order to qualify, the journal must include keywords or their equivalent in the original language of the work and in a second language.
34	Metatags. The journal qualifies if metatags appear in the presentation page of the journal source code.
35	Browser. The journal qualifies if it includes a search site that allows searches by words, indexes, the use of boolean operators, etc.
36	Added value services. The journal qualifies if it offers alerts, hypertext links, forums, link guides, etc...



Straight Search
•Select “Catalogue” option and after the page being reloaded, insert journal title in the box signaling “Journal's Identification Title”. •In order to search for a record, please click on appropriate subject item.
Searchable Lists
•There are five lists: “Title”, “Subject”, “Country”, “Publishing House” and “Indexing”. • Choose a list and select the alphabet character you need to consult. • In order to consult journals which titles starts with figures or symbols, please use the icon preceding character A. •“Indexing” listing is referring to information services, databases, indexing and abstracts in which periodical is reviewed. • The alphabetically arranged requested list will be display. •In order to see a record please click on appropriate item.
The Parameters of the Catalogue's Publishing Quality

In order to know a little more about the definition of publishing quality judgments of the LATINDEX Catalogue please consult “Parameters” link. For more detailed information: latindex@servidor.unam.mx