What POSI Is
The Panorama Open Scholarly Index (POSI) is an open scholarly indexing, journal analytics, and automated evaluation infrastructure. Here is precisely what it does, what it provides, and who it is designed to serve.
An open journal discovery and indexing infrastructure
POSI aggregates openly licensed metadata from Crossref, OpenAlex, OpenCitations, DOAJ, ROR, and ORCID, and distinguishes clearly between Discovered (found, unreviewed) and the POSI Core Collection (editorially admitted). See Core Collection for the full coverage model.
An automated, evidence-based journal rating system
Early-Stage Rating computes a 100-point journal score entirely from crawled site evidence and sampled Crossref article metadata — no reviewer, editor, publisher, sponsor, or POSI administrator has a way to directly set a score, percentile, or quartile. Only the underlying evidence can be corrected, which triggers a recompute.
Open citation metrics and subject rankings
PCI and PCS are POSI's own openly-defined citation-impact metrics, computed from open data (OpenAlex, Crossref) — not licensed from or equivalent to Journal Impact Factor or CiteScore. Subject rankings and quartiles are computed within POSI's own subject classification (PSC).
Open data, open methodology, and an open-source calculation engine
POSI-produced data (taxonomy, metric snapshots, rankings) is published under CC BY 4.0; the calculation engine is MIT-licensed; aggregated upstream metadata retains its original source's license. Every figure traces to a pinned data and engine commit — see Open Data.
A research transparency initiative
POSI is designed to make scholarly publishing infrastructure more transparent, reproducible, and machine-readable. Our goal is to help researchers, librarians, and institutions make better-informed decisions about where to publish and what to cite.
Mission
POSI exists to make scholarly publishing infrastructure more transparent, reproducible, and machine-readable. We aggregate openly licensed metadata, apply automated evaluation methodology that no person can hand-adjust, and publish the results — data, engine, and methodology alike — as versioned open infrastructure. Our goal is to help the scholarly community make better-informed decisions without replacing or competing with established indexing services.
Who Should Use POSI
Verify journal metadata quality and discoverability before submission. Check DOI coverage and open citation status.
Assess journal transparency, licensing, and editorial governance as part of collection evaluation or open access advisory work.
Use PQF as one input when assessing individual journals for collection development or OA-fund eligibility — always combined with other sources (DOAJ, Scopus, WoS). Not for ranking institutions, departments, or researchers; see Responsible Use.
Access structured metadata via the planned public API. Export records in JSON, CSV, BibTeX, or RIS formats.
Identify metadata gaps and policy improvements. Use the PQF rubric as a self-assessment checklist.
What POSI Is Not
POSI is not licensed from or affiliated with Web of Science, Scopus, or DOAJ, not an accreditation authority, not a peer review certifier, and not a substitute for evaluating individual researchers.