Publication Channels and Publication Points

Academic publication channels mean publishers that have been approved by the national publishing committee and been entered into the Norwegian register for scientific journals, series and publishers. Academic publication channels are categorised as level 1 and level 2 channels, where level 2 gives the highest score of publication points.

Even if a publisher is listed in the register, not everything they publish is automatically considered academic. Each publication must meet the four criteria for academic quality, as defined by the report “Emphasis on research” (2004, p. 24–26, see also the Reporting Instructions). They must:

• Present new insight;
• be presented in a form which makes the results verifiable or usable in new research;
• be presented in a language and have a distribution which makes it accessible for the majority of researchers who may be interested in it;
• be in a publication channel (journal, series, publisher, web site) with routines for peer review.

In addition, each contribution must have been reviewed by an external peer without any ties to the editor that may influence the decision.

This means that book reviews, editorials, commentaries/letters to the editor and non-reviewed contributions, all of which are normally published in academic publication channels, are not considered academic in the above sense. Neither are revised editions of an academic publication (a publication can generate publication points only once), textbooks, popular academic publications and other publications addressed to a broader public, and/or non-fictional writing aimed at disseminating rather than presenting original research.

Publication points are allocated on the basis of the number of author’s shares credited to your institution. For each publication the sum of points will be determined by the number of co-authors and author’s shares, type of publication (monograph, chapter, article), the level of the publication channel and whether international co-authors have contributed or not. For further explanation, see NSD’s webpage.

Publication statistics

The results from all Norwegian institutions are made available in the Database for statistics on higher education in April each year (in Norwegian only). Furthermore, the HVL library publishes HVL’s results on our website. In addition, we produce an annual report on academic publishing at HVL that is presented to the Research and Innovation Board.

Please contact Lise Vik-Haugen if you need further information about HVL’s publishing activity, detailed statistics etc. See also HVL’s Guidelines for access to, use of and sharing of Cristin publication data (in Norwegian only).