ShareTreatment of publications with publishing practices that may compromise scientific quality
In the teaching staff assessment processes, from 2022 onwards, as a general rule, AQU Catalunya will not consider as quality contributions publications in journals or publishing houses whose processes of acceptance and review of originals are deficient in the justified opinion of the experts of the corresponding Specific Committee, regardless of the position of the journal or publishing house in the bibliometric rankings.
Since 2020, the Research Assessment Committee Specific Committees have detected increasing examples of applicants whose CVs present publications in scientific journals with publishing practices that could compromise the scientific quality of the contributions.
Following a process of analysis and reflection, the Research Assessment Committee, applying the fundamental principle of quality over quantity, has approved the inclusion of the following correction mechanism in the assessment criteria, to be applied as of 1 January 2022:
- As a general rule, publications in journals or publishing houses whose processes of acceptance and review of originals are deficient in the justified opinion of the experts of the corresponding specific committee, regardless of the position of the journal or publishing house in the bibliometric rankings, are not considered to be quality contributions. In this respect, papers published in journals which have practices that compromise their quality (such as editorial deadlines that are too short to guarantee the quality of the review and an unjustifiably high volume of articles or self-citations) will be treated as non-indexed publications, unless they are accompanied by sufficient evidence of quality.