In this LPForum 2020 session, Scholastica Co-Founder and CEO Brian Cody shared actionable insights on how to help a journal navigate the technical aspects of the PubMed Central (PMC) application process. To help you stay on top of the PMC application process, check out Scholastica's "PubMed Central inclusion checklist" here: https://www.youtube.com/redirect?q=https%3A%2F%2Fs3.amazonaws.com%2Fmarketing.scholasticahq.com%2FIndexing%2Bguides%2FChecklist-PMC-Indexing-Scholastica.pdf&redir_token=Ce21lXP43FoIsWvUMWeNgTQIAj18MTU4ODk2Mzg2NUAxNTg4ODc3NDY1&event=video_description&v=22Ly1I1Koe8

1. Helping a journal apply
to PMC when you’ve
never done it before
Case study and indexing best practices
#LPForum20 @briancody @scholasticahq

2. Session overview
◎ Share lessons learned
◎ PubMed Central (PMC)
◎ Indexing tips and strategies
◎ Share experiences during Q&A

3. Indexes:

4. Easy-to-integrate journal
publishing solutions to help
further your mission:
◎ Peer review system
◎ Production service (PDF,
HTML, XML)
◎ OA journal hosting, discovery
support, and analytics

5. TL;DR
◎ Find the inclusion guidelines
◎ Talk to someone who’s already done it before
○ Vendor, another journal, the index team
◎ Do internal audit, get all boxes checked
○ Content
○ Technical check
◎ THEN apply for inclusion

6. PubMed Central
Lessons learned

7. Start at the very beginning...

8. PMC case study
◎ Campus-based publication ~3 years old
◎ Medical journal
◎ Run by faculty and residents

9. Small publishers reaching out
◎ Similar experience across campus-based and
small society publishers
◎ “Can you help us answer these questions?”
◎ We needed to learn more to be able to help

10. “
What is PubMed Central?

12. ““PubMed is a kind of superset for
content archived and indexed by
NLM. It pulls in articles from both
the MEDLINE index and PMC
full-text archive”
https://blog.scholasticahq.com/post/how-to-add-academic-journal-articles-to-pubmed-overview-publishers/

15. “
What are the inclusion steps?

16. 6 steps in PMC inclusion
1. Apply
2. Screening
3. Scientific quality review
4. Technical evaluation
5. Pre-production
6. Live release

20. Technical requirements
◎ Individual XML file for full text of each article
◎ The original high-resolution digital image
files for all figures in each article
◎ A PDF, if one exists, in addition to the XML
version of each article
◎ Supplementary material files

21. Technical challenges
◎ DTD (Document Type Definition)
○ Normally JATS XML, but not always
◎ Copyright license
○ E.g. CC-BY, publisher-specific, etc.
◎ Article type
○ Original research, clinical case reports, etc.
○ Make sure representative of journal’s content

25. Internal audit
◎ Appropriate content, majority English?
◎ Regular publication history of 25+ articles?
◎ ISSN?
◎ Editorial board on website?
◎ Policies and processes explained?
○ ICMJE recommendations
○ Joint statement from DOAJ/COPE/OASPA/WAME

26. Internal audit: use PMC’s examples!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/pub/journalselect/

27. Internal audit: use PMC’s examples!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/pub/journalselect/

28. Areas of confusion we’ve seen
◎ First issue(s)
◎ Journal-level policy
◎ In-article
acknowledgment

29. Areas of confusion we’ve seen
◎ Who owns the
journal?
◎ Misconduct
◎ Complaints and
appeals

30. Important to get it right
◎ If rejected, 24 months before applying again
◎ Need 1 journal accepted and adhering for 6
months before you can add more
◎ PMC is faster route to Pubmed vs MEDLINE

31. Beyond PMC
Lessons learned from Google
Scholar, DOAJ, and other indexes

32. Google Scholar

33. ≠

34. Google Scholar
◎ Crawler, so you don’t upload anything
◎ Connects to citing articles
◎ Pulls in data from multiple sources
◎ Metadata tags in the HTML, e.g.
○ citation_title
○ citation_author
○ citation_pdf_url

35. Recommendations for software

39. “
Wait! My Google Scholar entries
don’t look right!

40. Changes take a while

41. PDF vs HTML

42. First results not always yours

43. First results not always yours

44. DOAJ
The Directory of Open Access Journals

45. What is DOAJ?
◎ “DOAJ is a community-curated online
directory that indexes and provides access
to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed
journals”
◎ Barometer for ethical publishing practices
(vs predatory publishers)
◎ Required for Plan S compliance

46. DOAJ indexing
◎ Not just journal-level registration - articles
too!
◎ Adding articles is way to cascade metadata
into other aggregators
○ E.g. Worldcat
◎ Inclusion form asks for similar information
as other indexes

47. Tips for DOAJ inclusion
◎ Review ~60 questions in the application
◎ Upload XML - they do not crawl
◎ DTDs: DOAJ or Crossref
○ DOAJ links to site to upload XML + XSD to validate

49. Area to help: copyright and licensing
◎ “Does the journal embed or display
licensing information in its articles?”
◎ “Does the journal allow readers to read,
download, copy, distribute, print, search, or
link to the full texts of its articles and allow
readers to use them for any other lawful
purpose?”

50. Takeaways

51. Lessons learned
◎ Find the inclusion guidelines
◎ Technical check can be confusing
◎ Utilize your partners and vendors early
◎ Do internal audit, get all boxes checked -
THEN apply for inclusion

52. Helpful links
◎ PubMed Central inclusion guidelines
○ Interview with PMC Program Manager Kathryn Funk
◎ Google Scholar
○ Scholastica blog post
◎ DOAJ
○ Scholastica blog post

53. Share your experiences

54. Helping a journal apply
to PMC when you’ve
never done it before
Case study and indexing best practices
#LPForum20 @briancody @scholasticahq