Algerian Journal of Human and Social Sciences Volume : 07 / N° : 01

‫المجلة الجزائرية للعلوم اإلنسانية واالجتماعية‬ (Juin 2023), p366-379

ISSN : 2588-1558 / EISSN : 2710-8635

Towards Effective Research Publication: A Comprehensive

Review of Scientific Journal Platforms in Algeria

Houda BOUMEDIENE *
University of Laghouat, Department of English, (Algeria), [email protected]

Date of submission: 01/03/2023 Date of acceptance 16/06/2023 Date of publication: 30/06/2023

Abstract:
Currently, many researchers across all fields are exploring new technologies to
create new research. The rise of social media platforms has significantly changed
how people communicate and interact, and researchers are interested in
understanding how these platforms can be used alongside computational
resources to facilitate digital research. A platform is a web application that allows
users to manage website content without requiring technical knowledge. Journal
platforms facilitate the exchange, reading, and creation of academic research, and
researchers can access papers, data sets, and other research artifacts with open
free access. However, many novice Algerian researchers and PhD students are
not yet familiar with these platforms, and some struggle to use digital platforms
like ASJP. This paper aims to examine the most prominent journal platforms,
including ASJP, ResearchGate, Mendeley, Google Scholar, and Moodle, and to
evaluate their advantages through descriptive analysis. Additionally, the paper
will highlight the components and services of these platforms which every
researcher needs to know before publishing academic research in Algeria, as
mastering digital platforms has been a subject of continuing study.
Keywords: Academic research; digital platforms; novice researchers; Publishing; journal
platforms

* Corresponding author.

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1. Introduction
Digital platforms have promoted interest in all disciplines for its benefit of
creating new technology, educational models and scientific research. More and
more universities, companies and centers are either well into their digitalization
process or in their beginning pits of it. Yet, as the development of technology
continues and new needs from users arise, the more traditional universities and
companies are investing in information technology (Katz, 2020)
Nowadays, an increasingly many researchers and practitioners have started
paying attention to the digital platform area, where they can find new
opportunities, practices and new teaching models have particularly been very
interesting. Social media platforms such as Facebook have changed how people
communicate with each other. Operating system platforms such as Android have
become the omnipresent center of the telecommunications system. Also, Payment
platforms such as PayPal are revolutionized the financial system.
2. Learning Management Systems or Platforms
Internet is a wonderful tool for use in the teaching process as it permits
extension of areas, so that students learn to communicate and share, encouraging
them to enjoy learning. More specifically, they will learn in those environments or
contexts that assure a set of characteristics for creating and designing courses in
the distance. These environments are also known as LMS Learning Management
System. Some common LMss are Moodle, Edmodo, Mahara and others. These
systems greatly differ from each other, in the programming language they were
developed, and in features and services they offer.
In many other concepts the E-Learning concept is presented through
different terms depending on the context such as learning management system
(LMS); Course Management System (CMS), Learning Content Management
System (LCMS); Managed Learning Environment (MLE); Learning Support
System (LSS) or Learning Platform (LP). In other context is known as education
via _computer mediated communication or online education (Kateeva et al., 2010).
LMS has the crucial objective to centralize and clarify administration and
management of teaching and learning through e-learning or what is called remote
teaching. It refers to a system that covers the whole process of online teaching/
learning, possessing an interface that helps all employees: teachers, students,
administrators and visitors to communicate about their learning process, and urges

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them, at the same time, to work together, through the exchange of courses,
research and knowledge.
LMS or platform provides a context or a space for learning and exchange.
It often refers to an individual or individuals who represent organizations,
institutions, companies…. with several backgrounds and objectives. These
individuals come together to find out problems, identify opportunities and
discover suitable ways to improve and achieve their aims. They may design
implement activities, use particular programs, implement research….
Among the key benefits of e-learning platforms we can find the
accessibility and flexibility, from the students’ perspective, the rationalization of
different data resources, interactivity and enhancement of communicative learning.
Online courses have the advantage of providing different content for students
anywhere all over the world, faster and more attractive than the conventional face
to face courses (Lopes, 2018). In addition, E- learning Platform provides easy
access to a wanted material or course at any wanted time besides in case of any
chronological or geographical restrictions the learner is not obliged to attend and
he may feel that he is acting completely alone isolated from the real world. The
platform offers many new ways of learning via distance, for instance using chats,
forums, messages…
2.1. ResearchGate
ResearchGate Platform is the famous social networking service for
researchers and scholars in the world though there are other websites, such as
Researcher ID, Academia and Linked. Researchers prefer ResearchGate, except in
China, they use Research Mate.
ResearchGate also updates research publication list and makes it easy to
share by posting or by privately sharing with specific individual researchers. It is a
good site for free resources, a free platform for documentation of research
activities, sharing knowledge and experiences (Research-Gate, 2019)
Due to the fact that many researchers in Algeria use a lot Research Gate to
correspond and collaborate with each another, the Algerian Higher Education
Ministry is lately thinking of creating an Algerian ResearchGate for Algerian
Scholars only; the project is going to be realized soon by November 2020 and the
Algerian Scholars will have the Algerian Research-Gate.

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2.2. Mendelay
Mendeley Platform is a research management tool used to organize
research works It is an academic software that indexes and organizes all of PDF
docs and research papers into a digital bibliography and cites them as well. It also
looks up PubMed, Cross Ref, DOIs, and other related document details
automatically. Such platform permits researchers to collaborate share information,
resources and experiences with their fellow researchers (Mendelay,2019)
2.3. Google Scholar
Google Scholar is an internet-based search engine or a network designed
to discover scholarly research data, books, theses, articles, preprints, theses,
abstracts, and court claims from academic publishers, societies, online repositories,
and universities. This platform serves to assist researchers to solve the problem of
a better tool for finding a full-text docs published at any era rather than link
resolver software or journal portals. Also, such platform proved to be more
effective user performance and user satisfaction. (Dixon,2010)
3. Why Moodle in Algeria?
Moodle stands for Modular Object Oriented Term Developmental
Learning Environment. As a concept represents one of the most widely used open
source e learning platform. It was originally created by Martin Dougiam, as he is
computer science engineer and educator the first version of Moodle released on
August, 2002 (Chun,2011). Within such a system; students or learners and even
educators can be given a single robust. Students can access course contents in
different formats (image; sound, text) and to interact with teachers or colleagues
also it can be described as a tool by teachers to help foster autonomy by
organizing learning to help foster autonomy by organizing learning recourses and
facilitating an environment for autonomous learning.
Moodle mainly is used to make courses online in order to have an effective
class it doesn’t matter which level you are teaching or which level is concerned.
This course management system Moodle is a web application that can be located
anywhere in the world and the person who used Moodle is Moodler. This platform
provides a set of web-based tools in order to allow the creation of online courses
such as forums, messaging, quizzes, blogs, assignment and databases. Moodle
platform has 3 levels of use with features of differential use and access. those
three users are: the administrator who is the one in charge of the management of
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the platform, the teacher who has many roles to play depending on the course
nature for example he can be a trainer, facilitator, promoter and the third user is
the student who has also different roles to play he can be a learner participant
(DOUGIAMAS &TAYLOR, 2002)
Moodle has been adopted by Algerian Universities since 2008 as the first
tentative of e-learning growth. Moodle was an open source LMS, besides being a
stable centralized platform, it is highly secure. Many programs as well as plugins
are available to protect it from malware and virus. It is therefore trusted by
organizations and institutions all over the world. Moreover, it is available in more
than 100 languages. It has also more than 100 million registered users around the
world, and hence the best choice for Higher Education Institutions in Algeria.
Moodle proved to be effective to facilitate instruction for educators and even
teachers and provide them with useful activities to enhance online learning in
personalized environment, that foster learner’s autonomy, so that they become
more independent. In addition, Moodle provides all the pedagogical activities,
workshops, glossaries, wikis, lessons…. Thus, it is used for training, online
course development, administration services, teachers’ collaboration online and
remote education opportunities. It has been recognized as a Top 100 Learning
Tool by the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies (Lone et. al., 2018)
4. Scientific Research Publication in Algeria
Publishing Scientific Research is one of the most important tasks of higher
education institutions whose primary objective is production of knowledge and its
dissemination. Scientific publication in the last decade has become rapidly
increasing due to the availability of modern technologies. Also, thanks to many
applications which have a great impact in facilitating publication’s procedures and
operations. These applications came to solve problems of scientific publication in
the conventional environment, and bring alternatives that serve the author,
publisher, and researcher and reader.
The idea of having a scientific research journal to be a container for
availability of different research issues, volumes, topics …… in itself represents a
great challenge for many scholars. The costs involved in the deployment process
under the conventional system and the accompanying obstacles and difficulties
(complicate process, lack of respect for publication deadlines, difficulty in
obtaining numbers….). Due to all these challenges, an urgent need to shift
towards electronic publication has emerged, either by digitizing the paper versions
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of previous issues or through pure electronic versions. Therefore, the good
exploitation of the new technological means was necessary to overcome the
previous problems and contribute to scientific publication development in Algeria.
The Algerian Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research has
made many attempts to improve the reality of scientific research and overcome
the problems of the conventional publishing system, through the creation of an
electronic platform to manage and facilitate scientific communication between
researchers from different areas of the country, and gathering all the paper
published articles of various laboratories and research centers of Algerian
universities and making them available on the platform with an open access for
everyone.
Publishing platforms have a great role in introducing journals, especially
those that they do not possess websites, and therefore, enable or facilitate the
access to them and their valuable contents. According to Fox et al., (2015), there
are two types of platforms:
 Platforms which seek to broadcast journals and introduce them only
 Platforms which create and broadcast journals as well; in this case the role
of these platforms is rather providing services such as a space to receive
authors’ articles, evaluate them by experts, and prepare both copies hard
and electronic…. all these operations are carried out on one platform.
5. Algerian Scientific Journals Platform «ASJP»
The Algerian Scientific Journals Platform (ASJP) is an effective electronic
system came to bypass problems in conventional publishing and contributes to the
dissemination and availability of knowledge production on a large scale among
the Algerian academic community (Soudous et. al, 2020). It is an automated
system for managing electronic publication of scientific journals that enables a
continuous control over all steps the scientific publication process, starting from
the authors registration, transmission, attribution, auditing, template, reviewing till
publishing online.
To achieve the main target of the Algerian Ministry of Higher Education
and Scientific Research to develop and improve the of scientific and technical
information communication process, a national system in a form of a platform
was created to facilitate and manage university scientific publication process and
ensuring an electronic access to published articles, works and research. Also, in
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order to make them available to all without any hindrance.
ASJP is an electronic platform for national scientific journals supervised
by the Center for Research in Scientific and Technical Media (CERIST) and seeks
to assist researchers wishing to publish their researches or articles to choose the
appropriate scientific journals that correspond to their research themes (GHAZAL
& BOURAHLI, 2019) It was officially launched in 2016 to protect researchers
from falling into traps of fake publishers and non-reliable journals and guarantee
the article to be published. The platform is available at the following website:
https://www.asjp.cerist.dz/
5.1. How does the ASJP Work?
KOOHANG and HERMAN (2006) presented a detailed description of the
essential components that should be available in the ideal form of electronic
publishing platforms claiming that a model platform consists of three basic
elements:
 The Communication System: It connects the author with the editorial
board
 Content Management System: It is the system responsible for coordinating
and disseminating content.
 The Portal: The most important part because it ensures the accessibility
and download ability of scientific information. The platform portal
represents the interface through which researchers can access the platform.
It also provides search services, whether simple or advanced, and
displaying results with ease, flexibility and effectiveness. The three core
components are demonstrated in figure 1:

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Figure1: The Components of a Modal Platform

5.2. The Core components of Scholarly Publishing Platforms (KOOHANG
&HERMAN,2006)
The ASJP is based on an electronic system that can organize and classify
journals according to certain criteria, due to the fact that every journal has its own
metadata: the structure and organization of its issue, periods of issuance, year of
its establishment, ISSN issuing authority, scientific specialty, editorial team,
international standard number, data on their numbers, full texts of research and
scientific articles .... Moreover, it can ensure the ability to contact the members of
the editorial board and reviewers and follow the articles sent through the
"Indicators Board" or “The control panels” which are also divided into other units:
The Unit of Selecting a Journal, The Unit for Submitted Articles, The Unit for
Articles under Review, The Unit for Rejected Articles, The Unit for Accepted
Articles, Messages and Notifications Unit……….
5.3. ASJP Services
According to ELHAMZA (2018), the most prominent services provided by the
platform are as follows:
- It provides the ability to have an account on the platform and have
multiple options as an author, as a reviewer or as a manager
- It provides the last ten articles published for a journal on the platform.
- The new Journals are included in the platform.
- It provides new, updated statistics on the number of recently published

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articles.
- It provides the ten most downloaded articles on the platform.
- Simple search and advanced search service.
5.4. The Role of ASJP in Supporting Scientific Research and Publication
SOUDOUS and BENSEBTI (2018) presented a set of roles which ASJP has
played in developing scientific research publication in Algeria and they are as
follow:
- It plays a great role in introducing the scientific productions published in
hard copies and being neglected and forgotten by scholars.
- It has an important role in informing researchers and teachers about the
indexed journals which they should publish in, to enhance and disseminate
the Algerian Scientific Research.
- It has a big role in contributing to the development and collaboration in
research of many researchers in different cities to enhance university
academic publishing.
- It is a means of overcoming publishing problems in Algerian universities
by providing the possibility of sending works and research directly to the
editorial board of the selected journal.
- It is essential as it represents a national project that greatly contributes to
supporting and enriching the Algerian Digital Content on the Web.
- It is successful in shortening the length of reviewing process, which is a
big challenge the researchers usually suffer from. Yet, the speed of
publication is among the most important advantages of the ASJP
- ASJP has a big role in eliminating bureaucracy, and subjectivity in
reviewing articles.
- It represents an initiative in the field of scientific publishing and an
effective means of controlling journals in Algeria. (Soudous, 2020)

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Figure2: ASJP Interface of a Researcher’s Account “Indicators Panel”

Most importantly, ASJP has a crucial role facilitating scientific publication
in Algeria due to the high-end services it provides in the publishing process.
Relying on advanced technologies, the researcher (the author) can publish his
articles through his own “Indicators Panel” (Figure 2) which represents the
interface of ASJP. The panel provides the researcher with all the details regarding
his article, from the deposit to its publication, which gives the author the ability to
follow all steps of his article publication process.
It is also worthy to mention that despite the newness of the platform, it has
succeeded to attract a great number of journals (laboratories journals, indexed
journals and even non-indexed journals). Currently, 510 scientific journals
(according to the statistics of July 2021) from various scientific disciplines are
granted to the researcher in the platform, the fact that provides researchers with
much freedom and alternatives to choose from; and enhances the visibility of their
works throughout the world, which strengthens the scientific contact between the
Algerian researcher and researchers in other Arab countries. Today, ASJP has
reached more than 7,800 authors of diverse disciplines who published their
research in. (ASJP, 2021)
Despite the fact that the ASJP is a recent experience as one of SRJM
Platforms in Technology based research field, it has succeeded in promoting
scientific research dissemination and publication in Algeria, as it publishes papers
in 7 languages. It also covers 30 domains (figure, 3) ordered alphabetically, with
more than 55608 articles available in full texts. (ELHAMZA, 2018)

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Figure 3: Journals’ Domains and their Order in ASJP

5.6. Drawbacks of ASJP
Nowadays, ASJP has become a necessity to keep up with technology based
communication and scientific research in the world. Algeria was in need of SRJM
Platforms to solve the conventional problems and deficiencies of scientific
publication mainly to promote higher education and universities research. Thus,
ASJP comes to respond to all those needs. Yet, novice researchers and PhD
students still struggle with the platform claiming that they find some weaknesses
within. ELHAMZA (2018) in his paper “ASJP: is it a mean of an open access and
a real tool to eradicate bureaucracy and scientific nepotism or just an illusion and
technological fashion!?” explained some weaknesses in ASJP:
- The big difference in the three versions of the platform, Arabic, French and
English. The French version is more effective and useful than the others. Arabic
and English seem to be incomplete; they lack some services.
- The use of thematic classification or order in the main interface is really a
messy method and usually very confusing for visitors.
- Also the alphabetical order of journals is not appropriate it should not be
mentioned in the main interface, especially that the number of journals is rapidly
increasing, which make the main interface overloaded with data.
- The descriptive section of every journal differs from one journal to another
and sometimes it’s incomplete and is not able to introduce the journal
appropriately.
- Lack of precise and reliable research of key-words, authors’ names….. in the
platform.
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Moreover, based on my experience within the ASJP, as a researcher, I find that
the reviewing time is very long and time consuming from 1 month to1 year,
sometimes until you forget your submission; maybe because of loads of
submissions every day in one journal or due to the few number of reviewers in
that journal …. Also , there is a need to consider the reasons behind any rejection
of a submission ; they are often non-convincing: “out of period of reception” ,
“sorry, we do not accept any submission at the moment”…….Another deficiency
of the ASJP is that when your research paper is accepted you will surely have
some minor revisions at the meantime neither the ASJP nor the journal will
provide you with “Acceptance Certificate/Letter ” , thus just you have to wait till
the date of publication, even if you want to submit your accepted paper in
scientific committee for approval, you will not be able without acceptance letter .
According to many PhD Students, what is the most challenging hindrance in
publishing in ASJP is journals’ templates; there is no common or conventional
template for ASJP papers , instead , every research journal has its own particular
template that surely differs a lot from another journal’s template .Henceforth , if
you receive a rejection by X journal and you want to submit the same paper in
another journal Y, you find it very challenging because once again you have to put
it in another template which corresponds to Y journal only.
5. Conclusion
The digital Platforms are used all over the world and researchers serve up
to them to share and transmit research to their educational communities, making
users and developers working collaboratively. The great success of these
platforms was due to the fact that they are open source systems, providing
scholars and researchers the opportunity to make new contributions and new
publications. It seems to us that the integration of such platforms in Algeria
deserves special attention.
Despite the newness of the ASJP and all the weaknesses, it was a significant
step in scientific publication in Algeria. Today, it is able to provide researchers
with a digital repository of thousands of scientific works that can be accessed by
everyone without any restrictions in a short time since its inception. It could
facilitate the publishing process and raises " interest " in technological oriented
publication system, more specifically in the Platforms. Furthermore, this study
ends up with the following recommendations:

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- Raising awareness of the importance of digital platforms because of the
recent information they provide for intellectual communities.
- Supporting and encouraging scholars and researchers to publish through
platforms and avoid all problems of conventional publishing.
- Improving the ASJP problem of template, through unifying journals’
templates and creating one common template particular to ASJP to
facilitate papers submission process for many scholars.
- Increasing collaboration in reviewing by scholars of different journals in
order to shorten the reviewing process period; reviewers can assist their
mates on the reviewing process especially if they have many submissions
to review.
- Exploiting all modern technological capabilities to serve research and
scientific publication in Algerian Universities.
- Make research and scientific Publication a priority and among the basics on
which national development is based.
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