SINTA (Science and Technology Index) is Indonesia’s national, government-run research information system. It is managed by the Indonesian Ministry of Higher Education, Science, and Technology (currently branded Kemdiktisaintek, following a 2024 restructuring of the ministry that previously oversaw it as Kemendikbudristek) and gives a single web portal for measuring and ranking the research performance of Indonesian researchers, academic journals, and institutions. For anyone working across a CRIS (Current Research Information System) that includes Indonesian affiliations — funders, publishers, international co-authors, or research-administration staff verifying an Indonesian collaborator’s credentials — SINTA functions as the country-level equivalent of systems like South Korea’s Korea Citation Index (KCI) and KRI or Taiwan’s TCI-HSS: a national layer that sits alongside, and pulls data from, international citation databases rather than replacing them.
What SINTA is and who runs it
SINTA was initiated in 2016 and formally launched in 2017 by the Directorate General of Research and Development Strengthening under what was then Indonesia’s Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher Education (Ristekdikti). Ministry structures in Indonesia have been reorganized more than once since then — research and higher-education functions moved into a combined Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology (Kemendikbudristek), and then, following a 2024 split, into the current Ministry of Higher Education, Science, and Technology. SINTA’s live portal now sits on that current ministry’s domain. Throughout these changes SINTA has continued to operate as the same underlying registry, so older references to “SINTA Ristekdikti” or “SINTA Kemendikbudristek” describe the same system under a prior ministerial name, not a different tool.
Structurally, SINTA is best understood as an aggregation and scoring layer, not a primary bibliographic database in its own right. It pulls publication and citation records for Indonesian-affiliated researchers and journals from external sources — principally Scopus and Google Scholar, with Web of Science data referenced in places — and combines them with Indonesia-specific administrative data (institutional affiliation, journal accreditation status, researcher registration) that only a national system can maintain. That combination is what lets SINTA answer questions international databases can’t on their own, such as “is this journal currently accredited by the Indonesian government, and at what tier.”
The three things SINTA tracks
1. Researchers
Individual Indonesian researchers (typically affiliated with a university or research institution) can register a SINTA profile, which aggregates their publication list, citation counts, and an h-index computed from the linked Scopus and Google Scholar data. The resulting composite is often referred to informally as a researcher’s “Sinta Score,” used internally by many Indonesian universities as one input into faculty performance review, promotion (jabatan fungsional dosen), and workload reporting (Beban Kerja Dosen, BKD) processes, alongside Indonesia’s separate SISTER/PDDikti administrative systems.
2. Journals
SINTA operates Indonesia’s national journal accreditation program, ranking accredited journals into six tiers, SINTA 1 through SINTA 6 (commonly written S1–S6), based on a numeric accreditation score:
| Tier | Score range | Approx. equivalent to prior scheme |
|---|---|---|
| SINTA 1 (S1) | 85 – 100 | Formerly “A”-accredited |
| SINTA 2 (S2) | 70 – <85 | Formerly “B”-accredited |
| SINTA 3 (S3) | 60 – <70 | — |
| SINTA 4 (S4) | 50 – <60 | — |
| SINTA 5 (S5) | 40 – <50 | — |
| SINTA 6 (S6) | 30 – <40 | — |
This tier is what Indonesian funders and universities most often mean when they require a “SINTA-accredited” or “Sinta 2” journal for a publication to count toward a grant deliverable, thesis requirement, or promotion dossier — it is a distinct, government-administered accreditation, separate from (though sometimes correlated with) whether a journal is also indexed in Scopus, Web of Science, or DOAJ.
3. Institutions
SINTA aggregates the profiles of a university or research institution’s registered researchers into an institution-level ranking, used as one input into Indonesia’s broader university research-performance comparisons (alongside data ministries also publish through PDDikti and Kemdiktisaintek’s own institutional-performance clustering).
Why SINTA exists as a national layer rather than relying on Scopus or Google Scholar directly
International indices like Scopus and Google Scholar are not government-administered and don’t track a status Indonesian policy cares about directly: whether a specific national journal currently holds government accreditation, and at what tier. A journal can be legitimate and well-run without being indexed internationally at all, particularly Indonesian-language journals serving a domestic scholarly audience. SINTA’s accreditation layer gives Indonesian funders, universities, and evaluators a locally administered credential to point to, while still importing citation and productivity signals from the international databases where they exist. This is the same functional role KCI/KRI plays for Korean-language scholarship and TCI plays for Taiwan’s humanities and social-science output — a national accreditation and researcher-registry system built to sit alongside, not substitute for, global citation databases.
What this means in practice for research administrators outside Indonesia
- Verifying a co-author’s or grantee’s Indonesian affiliation and output: a SINTA profile is a reasonable first check, though it should be cross-referenced against ORCID and the researcher’s institutional record rather than treated as a standalone identity credential — SINTA IDs are not a persistent identifier system in the ORCID/ROR sense, and profiles are self-registered and ministry-verified rather than globally federated.
- Assessing whether a journal meets a funder’s or publisher’s quality bar: a SINTA tier tells you the journal is currently accredited by the Indonesian government at a stated level; it does not by itself confirm international indexing, peer-review rigor to a specific standard, or absence from a predatory-journal watchlist — those need to be checked separately.
- Understanding why an Indonesian collaborator cites a “Sinta 2” or similar credential: this is a real, government-recognized accreditation tier that carries weight in Indonesian promotion and grant-reporting processes, comparable in function (not in scoring mechanics) to how a KCI registration functions for South Korean researchers.
SINTA compared to related systems
| System | Scope | What it primarily is |
|---|---|---|
| SINTA | Indonesia | National researcher/journal/institution ranking and journal-accreditation registry, layered on Scopus and Google Scholar data |
| Scopus / Web of Science | Global | Independent, commercial citation databases; not government-administered, no national accreditation function |
| Google Scholar | Global | Free, automated citation index; a raw data source SINTA and similar systems draw from, not a curated or accredited registry |
| Korea Citation Index (KCI) / KRI | South Korea | National citation database and researcher registry, government-administered, functionally analogous to SINTA |
| TCI-HSS | Taiwan | National citation index scoped to humanities and social sciences journals |
Frequently asked questions
Is a SINTA score the same as an h-index?
No. SINTA displays an h-index (computed from linked Scopus/Google Scholar data) as one of several metrics on a researcher’s profile, alongside total publications and citation counts, but the “Sinta Score” commonly referenced for journals is a separate accreditation score used specifically for the S1–S6 journal tiering, calculated by different criteria than a researcher h-index.
Does a journal need to be indexed in Scopus to get a SINTA rank?
No. SINTA accreditation (S1–S6) is a domestic Indonesian government credential and is available to journals regardless of international indexing status; a journal can hold a SINTA tier without being in Scopus, and vice versa, although the two often correlate at the higher tiers.
Can non-Indonesian researchers or journals register in SINTA?
SINTA is built around Indonesian institutional affiliation and the national journal-accreditation program, so it is not a general-purpose global registry the way ORCID or DOAJ are — it is scoped to Indonesia’s own research system, even though the underlying citation data it displays is international.
How does SINTA relate to Indonesia’s PDDikti and SISTER systems?
PDDikti (Pangkalan Data Pendidikan Tinggi) is Indonesia’s higher-education database of institutions, programs, and students, and SISTER is a separate lecturer/faculty administrative system used by many universities for workload and personnel reporting. SINTA is narrower and specifically research-output-focused — it is commonly used alongside these systems rather than instead of them, since Indonesian academic administration draws on several purpose-specific national systems rather than one consolidated CRIS.
Key takeaways
- SINTA is Indonesia’s government-run system for tracking and ranking researchers, journals, and institutions, run by the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, and Technology (Kemdiktisaintek).
- It layers Indonesia-specific accreditation and researcher-registration data on top of citation counts imported from Scopus and Google Scholar.
- Its most consequential output for outside parties is the SINTA 1–6 (S1–S6) journal accreditation tier, a domestic credential distinct from international indexing.
- It plays a functionally similar role to South Korea’s KCI/KRI and Taiwan’s TCI-HSS: a national research-information layer, not a replacement for global citation databases or persistent-identifier infrastructure like ORCID and ROR.
