The Evolution of the SCOPUS Title Evaluation Platform (STEP), 2010 to 2025

The SCOPUS Title Evaluation Platform (STEP) has had a significant global influence on academic publishing. It is the portal through which peer reviewed academic journals apply for listing in the SCOPUS database. Listings of journals in SCOPUS brought status and reputational gain to a journal, attractiveness to authors, and major profitability to their publishers. STEP was developed as a unique computer based decision assistance tool for the academic journal assessors who comprised the newly formed SCOPUS Content Selection Advisory Board (CSAB) from 2010 onwards. It combined quantitative measurements with systematic qualitative evaluations of submitted journals against a set of agreed and published criteria, and it was based on trustworthiness across the academic ecosystem. Over the past three decades, there has been an explosion in the numbers of academic journals and their publishers. This has been a consequence of huge global growth in academic activity, and it has been made possible by digital and internet systems; by open access publishing; and by the shift from subscription based financing to Article Publishing Charge (APC) based financing. In parallel, there has been an explosion in publication fraud on a global scale in diverse forms and at high levels of sophistication. In this essay, I aim to describe the creation, implementation and adaptation of STEP in a rapidly changing world to advance the processes of academic quality assurance, and the incremental addition of powerful functions to help assessors recognise and address the malign forms of fraud. These in turn are a perverse testimony to the importance that is attached globally to a SCOPUS listing