What are the requirements to include a journal in LibKey and BrowZine?

Modified on Mon, 15 Apr 2024 at 07:32 PM

In general a publisher needs to meet the following standards to be included in LibKey and BrowZine.


  1. The publisher must create and distribute metadata as part of their publication process. We ingest this metadata from all of our supported publishers, then normalize it on our servers to provide the uniform display of journals in BrowZine.

  2. The publisher must assign a permanent linking structure to their articles. This ensures that links to full text remain durable over time.

  3. The publisher must include issue and/or volume enumeration in their metadata. This data is key for display and linking purposes in LibKey and BrowZine.


Most major academic publishers create and distribute article metadata through organizations such as CrossRef and assign durable links to their articles using DOIs to facilitate scholarly communication. Some smaller publishers or independent titles may not do so and cannot be included.


Publishers of non-scholarly materials such as popular magazines, newspapers, trade publications or blogs generally do not participate in the scholarly communication process and, as a result, we cannot currently support these titles in LibKey or BrowZine.


A publisher's website must also meet some very basic technical requirements such as providing articles in HTML or PDF format and supporting remote access using IP authentication or other remote access technologies.


If you're curious about a specific publisher, you can review our article on supported publishers. You can also feel free to contact us with questions on specific journals or publishers.