Metadata Quality Score
MQS measures the completeness of article-level metadata across nine criteria, scored out of 25. It is one of six components that make up the POSI Quality Framework (PQF), weighted at 25% — inside the PQF formula this same figure is labeled the Metadata Quality Factor (MQF); MQS is its standalone name when published on this page. MQS is based entirely on publicly verifiable metadata fields.
What MQS Measures
MQS evaluates whether a journal's articles have the metadata fields required for scholarly discoverability, citation tracking, author disambiguation, and open text mining. All criteria are checked against Crossref metadata records and public article pages. No proprietary databases are used.
MQS is a journal-level aggregate: each criterion is evaluated across a sample of recent articles and scored proportionally. A journal scores full points for a criterion when all sampled articles satisfy it.
25
Maximum MQS Points
MQF subfactor weight in PQF
79
Platform Average MQS
Across 31 verified journal records
9
Scored Criteria
All based on Crossref + public article pages
Scoring Criteria
| # | Criterion | Rationale | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | DOI registered with Crossref for all articles | Minimum requirement for POSI article metadata | 4 |
| 2 | Crossref metadata complete (title, author, publication date) | Required for discoverability in all major indexes | 4 |
| 3 | Author names structured (given name + family name) | Required for citation disambiguation | 3 |
| 4 | ORCID supplied for at least one author per article | Open researcher identifier, enables author disambiguation | 3 |
| 5 | Abstract and keywords present in metadata record | Required for search engine indexing and topic classification | 3 |
| 6 | Reference list deposited with Crossref and parseable | Enables open citation tracking via I4OC participation | 3 |
| 7 | License URI present in Crossref metadata record | Machine-readable license required for text mining reuse | 2 |
| 8 | PDF or HTML full-text link stable and accessible | Required for content-level discoverability | 2 |
| 9 | Article type clearly identified (research/review/editorial) | Enables article type filtering in indexes | 1 |
| Total (MQF subfactor) | 25 | ||