The Center for Open Science and the Web of Science Group, a Clarivate Analytics company, are collaborating to incorporate TOP Factor among the information and metrics available through participating journals in its Master Journal List.
The Master Journal List allows researchers, publishers and librarians to keep track of the publication landscape. The online list is a go-to place for researchers to explore which journals are included in the Web of Science, and to help them identify suitable publishing destinations for their research. Now, further assisting researchers in identifying the transparent and open practices of journals by incorporating TOP Factor data.
Based on the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines, TOP Factor rates journals on the degree to which their policies implement open data, research design transparency, replication studies, and address publication bias.
“We are delighted that the Web of Science Group will be including TOP Factor in its journal information pages on the Master Journal List,” says David Mellor, Director of Policy Initiatives at the Center for Open Science. “Diversifying the information that is available about scientific journals benefits authors, readers, publishers, and editors by providing specific practices that are important to the scientific community.”
As part of its mission to increase the transparency and reproducibility of scientific research, the Center for Open Science is working to showcase steps being taken by the scientific community to tackle these issues. This includes not only pointing out best practices, but also pointing out specific recommendations for improvement.
“There is a lot of room for improvement in the publishing community,” says Mellor, “but the good news is that TOP Factor lets the community see that small steps can be easily taken toward more transparency. And the bigger steps covered by the more ambitious policies covered in the TOP Guidelines are also being taken by journals across several disciplines. This can serve as an inspiration that these practices are not pie in the sky dreams but are, in fact, achievable.”
TOP Factor and its data is a publicly available resource, and COS encourages its use by all parties who wish to recognize and promote transparent and open practices.
Take a moment to view the TOP Factor integration on the Master Journal List here.
About the Master Journal List
In recent months, the Master Journal List, a product of Clarivate Analytics, has been re-launched with new, improved functionality and a better user experience for the 320,000+ researchers, librarians and editors who visit the freely-available online list each month.
About the Center for Open Science
The Center for Open Science (COS) is a non-profit technology and culture change organization founded in 2013 with a mission to increase openness, integrity, and reproducibility of scientific research. COS pursues this mission by building communities around open science practices, supporting metascience research, and developing and maintaining free, open source software tools. The OSF is a web application that provides a solution for the challenges facing researchers who want to pursue open science practices, including: a streamlined ability to manage their work; collaborate with others; discover and be discovered; preregister their studies; and make their code, materials, and data openly accessible. Learn more at cos.io and osf.io.
Contact for the Center for Open Science
Inquiries: David Mellor david@cos.io
Web: https://cos.io/top
Twitter: @osframework
