Indexing & Archiving

Journal of Community Medicine and Health Sciences (JCMHS) ensures wide visibility, discoverability, and long-term preservation of published articles through indexing in recognized scholarly databases and participation in trusted digital-archiving initiatives. Our indexing and archiving framework follows the best practices set by the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), CrossRef, and Portico for academic sustainability.

Commitment to Indexing Excellence

Indexing and discoverability are vital components of academic credibility and accessibility. JCMHS actively partners with global indexing agencies to ensure that every published article reaches a broad scientific audience. Indexed content enhances citation potential, global readership, and long-term impact for authors and institutions.

Current Indexing Databases

JCMHS is currently indexed in the following major platforms and continues to apply for inclusion in additional recognized repositories and citation databases:

Indexing Applications in Progress

The editorial office of JCMHS has submitted and is under evaluation for inclusion in several prestigious indexing and citation-tracking databases:

• DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) – Application under review for open-access verification and metadata compliance.
• Scopus (Elsevier) – Under evaluation for inclusion based on citation quality and editorial policy adherence.
• Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics) – Pending acceptance in Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI).
• Embase (Elsevier) – Review in progress for medical and clinical research indexing.
• PubMed Central (PMC) – Application in preparation for inclusion of biomedical and public-health content.

Archiving and Digital Preservation

To safeguard the scholarly record and ensure perpetual access to published material, JCMHS employs multiple archiving solutions that comply with international preservation standards. The journal’s archiving policy is designed to ensure that research remains accessible even in the event of website disruption or discontinuation.

1. Portico

All published articles are preserved in Portico, a trusted digital preservation service supported by academic libraries and publishers worldwide. This guarantees permanent access to the content in case of any unforeseen technical failures.

2. LOCKSS and CLOCKSS

JCMHS participates in the LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) and CLOCKSS programs, ensuring decentralized and redundant preservation through multiple university libraries.

3. Institutional Repositories

Authors are encouraged to deposit their final published versions in institutional or subject repositories following the journal’s Repository Policy. This supports both accessibility and compliance with funder mandates for open access.

4. SHERPA/RoMEO Registration

JCMHS is listed in the SHERPA/RoMEO database, confirming its open-access licensing permissions and self-archiving rights for authors. This ensures full transparency regarding publication and redistribution rights.

Metadata Harvesting and Interoperability

JCMHS uses the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) to enable interoperability between open-access systems and indexing databases. This protocol ensures automatic metadata exchange and increased visibility for published articles across platforms.

OAI-PMH Base URL: https://www.communitymedjournal.com/index.php/jcmhs/oai

Preservation Strategy and Policy

Our preservation strategy includes:

• Automatic archiving upon article publication through Portico and LOCKSS.
• Full-text XML and PDF preservation to ensure format independence.
• Redundant backups in geographically distributed servers.
• Regular audits and checksum validation to prevent data corruption.
• Persistent DOI linking for article retrieval even if URLs change.

Article-Level Metadata

Each published article includes structured metadata such as:

• Title, Author(s), and Affiliation
• Abstract and Keywords
• DOI and Publication Date
• License and Rights Statement
• Citation Format (APA, Vancouver, and MLA)
• Funding and Conflict-of-Interest Disclosures

Benefits of Indexing for Authors

• Increased visibility, citation, and research impact.
• Enhanced academic credibility and discoverability.
• Guaranteed global access through open repositories.
• Cross-referencing support for grant applications and institutional reporting.
• Eligibility for citation-based metrics (h-index, Altmetric scores, etc.).

Archiving Partnerships

JCMHS collaborates with academic consortia and library systems to ensure multi-level redundancy in data preservation. These partnerships guarantee that every piece of published content remains discoverable for future generations of scholars and practitioners.

Long-Term Digital Policy

The journal’s long-term preservation policy aligns with ISO 16363 (Audit and Certification of Trustworthy Digital Repositories) standards. All preservation partners—Portico, LOCKSS, and CLOCKSS—undergo regular certification for compliance and reliability.

Data Citation and Reuse

Authors are encouraged to link underlying datasets and supplementary materials through repositories like Zenodo, Dryad, or Figshare. Data citations follow DataCite schema standards, ensuring that all research outputs are fully traceable and reusable under open licenses.

Persistent Identifiers (PIDs)

In addition to DOIs for articles, JCMHS supports other identifiers such as:

• ORCID iDs for author disambiguation.
• ROR IDs for institutional affiliations.
• CrossMark for version tracking and updates.
• FundRef for funding acknowledgments.

Discoverability Enhancements

All JCMHS articles are optimized for discoverability through:

• Schema.org and Dublin Core metadata integration.
• CrossRef reference linking and citation enrichment.
• Google Scholar metadata compliance (Highwire tags).
• Social media integration for broader dissemination.

“Through robust indexing and long-term preservation, JCMHS ensures that research in community medicine remains accessible, citable, and enduringly relevant.”