The Publication Lifecycle and Evaluation of Publications.

This paper is a contribution to the debate in Italy about the evaluation of scholarly research and the role that open access journals might play in that process. Drawing on the author’s experience as an academic manager and journal editor, it briefly discusses the aims and nature of research evaluation, and the types of outlets for research publications. The paper then outlines the role of a journal’s editors in the selection and copy-editing that shape the papers that are published, and the work that publishers undertake to establish and maintain journals’ quality. The paper summarises the issues involved in evaluating the quality of a journal and journal papers, and discusses the problems surrounding contemporary approaches such as citation analysis