Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A journal's public 'About'/'Journal Information' page names its editorial team with institutional affiliations and contact details, states its peer-review model (e.g. double-anonymized, minimum number of reviewers per submission), discloses the exact APC amount and any waiver policy, and names a specific archiving arrangement (e.g. CLOCKSS or Portico) — each disclosure maps directly onto one of the 16 principle categories, and is the same kind of disclosure DOAJ's own application form checks for before indexing a title.
- Is an instance
A society-owned journal that changes commercial publisher publishes a clear ownership-and-management statement distinguishing the sponsoring learned society from the publisher handling production and distribution — satisfying the framework's 'ownership and management' and 'editorial team' items rather than leaving the relationship ambiguous.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A journal whose website names no identifiable editors or editorial board, describes peer review only as 'all articles are peer reviewed' with no further detail, withholds its APC amount until after a manuscript is accepted, and states no archiving arrangement at all. This is the same operational profile the CASRAI predatory-journals guide flags as a red-flag pattern — it fails enough of the 16 items that COPE, DOAJ, and OASPA membership/indexing reviewers would decline it on transparency grounds alone, independent of any judgment about the underlying research quality.
- Not an instance
Treating the Principles themselves as a peer-review standard, a certification mark, or an indexing service: they are none of these. They are a disclosure-and-practice checklist that COPE/DOAJ/OASPA/WAME each apply as one input into their own separate membership or inclusion decisions — meeting the Principles does not, by itself, guarantee DOAJ indexing, Scopus/Web of Science coverage, or COPE membership, each of which layers additional criteria on top.
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
<role vocab="credit"
vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
vocab-term="Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing"
vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/principles-of-transparency-and-best-practice-in-scholarly-publishing" />{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "DefinedTerm",
"@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/principles-of-transparency-and-best-practice-in-scholarly-publishing",
"name": "Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing",
"identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/principles-of-transparency-and-best-practice-in-scholarly-publishing",
"description": "A joint framework of 16 disclosure and practice criteria — organized around journal content (name, website, publishing schedule, archiving), journal practices (publication ethics and editorial policies, peer review, access, copyright and licensing), organization (ownership and management, an advisory body, a named editorial team with contact information), and business practices (author fees, other revenue sources, advertising, direct marketing) — jointly developed and maintained by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME). First published in December 2013; subsequent versions were released in 2015, January 2018 (v3), and September 2022 (v4, the current version). A journal or publisher is an instance of 'meeting the Principles' when each of the 16 items is disclosed, verifiable, and consistent with what the framework specifies — not when a publisher merely asserts general trustworthiness. COPE, DOAJ, and OASPA each use the Principles as part of their own membership/indexing assessment criteria, and WAME applies them as part of its membership evaluation — meaning the framework functions as an operational, checkable definition of what a legitimate journal must show, not an aspirational statement. Compliance with the Principles is also cited as one of the criteria major indexing services (e.g. Scopus) weigh when assessing a journal for inclusion, though each index applies its own separate, additional criteria on top of it.",
"inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/research-integrity#set",
"url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/principles-of-transparency-and-best-practice-in-scholarly-publishing",
"sameAs": [],
"license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
"publisher": {
"@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
},
"dateModified": "2026-07-16T07:41:07",
"inLanguage": "en"
}
