Three of al-Quds Open University Journals Joined the Arab Citation Index, a Project Implemented by Clarivate Analytics

 As part of the University’s continuous endeavor to develop the process of publishing its scientific researches globally, and under the directions of the President of the University, three of al-Quds Open University scientific journals: The Educational & Psychological Research & Studies, the Humanities and Social Studies, and the Administrative & Economic Research & Studies journals have officially joined the Arab Citation Index, a project sponsored by the Arab Republic of Egypt, which is a new database on the Web of Science platform, implemented by Clarivate Analytics (previously Thomson Reuters). This citation index will make the University journals accessible to researchers worldwide by linking the Arabic scientific content to the global network of citations, including high-quality peer-reviewed scientific journals with more than 1.7 billion references cited.

The Dean of Graduate Studies and Scientific Research, Prof. Husni Awad, indicated that the Arab Citation Index was developed by Clarivate and funded by the Egyptian Government and the Egyptian Knowledge Bank. Through this platform, scientific content will become searchable in Arabic and English and hosted on Web of Science.  This step will lead to a significant increase in the visibility and influence of research published in al-Quds Open University’s journals on the international level, which increases its opportunity for citation to benefit researchers and raise the level of the University’s ranking in the international university rankings.

In this regard, Prof. Awad pointed out that the University submitted an application to the Arab Citation Index in 2019. The journals’ selection process was made by a neutral editorial board comprising representatives from member states in the Arab League. In addition, the selection process was conducted with respect to Web of Science standards, such as obtaining the ISSN, the ability to access the content through the journal’s website and the scientific standards for research published in journals.

It is worth mentioning that al-Quds Open University uses an open-source system (OJS) for its scientific journals, which was established in 2016 in cooperation between the Deanship of Scientific Research and the Information and Communication Technology Center (ICTC). It is an advanced global system that allows browsing journals by number, author, and title index. In addition, this system allows searching according to several available options such as reviewing research abstracts and keywords in Arabic and English and downloading entire research.