The Evaluation of the visibility of Iranian Scholarly Journals on the Internet based on international standards: with an emphasis on features affecting the visibility

The use of international standards is necessary to guarantee the quality of journals and to help them join the mainstream of knowledge. It is also essential to inform readers about the quality level achieved by the journals. Aiming to study how Iranian scholarly journals are represented on the Internet, the present communication evaluates 233 scholarly journals, accredited by the Iranian Ministry of Science, Research and Technology and the Ministry of Health and Medical Education in terms of their presentation of 27 quality standards on their websites or at Magiran, a Web-based directory dedicated to Iranian journals. The findings reveal that the journals are appropriately represented in terms of the studied standards, so that a majority of them displays at least half of the standards. However, the findings show that they largely overlook certain criteria that may have a more effective role in ensuring readers about the validity of the journals.