Every legitimate scholarly journal carries a set of identifiers and credentials that quietly do a lot of work — they tell readers the publication is real, help search engines and databases find your article, and make sure a citation still resolves years from now. If you are new to publishing, acronyms like ISSN, DOI and UGC-CARE can feel like alphabet soup.
This guide demystifies each one, explains why it matters for authors, and shows you how to verify it for yourself — using the International Journal of Advanced Research in Science and Technology (IJARST) as a concrete example along the way.
What is an ISSN, and why do journals have two of them?
An ISSN — International Standard Serial Number — is an eight-digit code that uniquely identifies a serial publication such as a journal, magazine or newspaper. It is issued by the ISSN International Centre through national registration authorities, and it identifies the title of the publication rather than any single article. Think of it as a permanent name tag for the journal itself.
Many journals carry two ISSNs because print and electronic editions are treated as distinct media. A Print ISSN (p-ISSN) identifies the physical edition, while an Online ISSN (e-ISSN) identifies the digital one. IJARST, for instance, publishes under Print ISSN 2319-1783 and Online ISSN 2320-1126. Seeing both is a healthy sign — it means the journal registered its formats properly rather than fabricating a number to look established.
The final character of an ISSN is a check digit, calculated from the preceding seven digits, which lets systems catch typos automatically. That small design detail is why libraries, indexing services and citation databases can rely on the code as a stable key. For an author, the practical takeaway is simple: a journal that displays a valid, verifiable ISSN has taken a basic but meaningful step toward legitimacy, and one that cannot show you a real ISSN at all deserves closer scrutiny.
How can you verify a journal’s ISSN?
You verify an ISSN through the official ISSN Portal at portal.issn.org, the authoritative global register. Enter the eight-digit number or the journal title, and the record should return the exact title, country of registration, publisher and medium. If a journal prints an ISSN on its website but nothing appears in the portal — or the registered title does not match the name on the site — treat that as a warning sign.
Verification matters because a genuine-looking number is one of the easiest things for a predatory publisher to invent. Cross-checking the identifier against its official register is a five-minute habit worth building, and it pairs well with the broader due diligence in our guide on 10 checks before you submit.
What is a DOI, and why does it matter for citation?
A DOI — Digital Object Identifier — is a permanent, unique string assigned to an individual article (or other digital object) that always resolves to its current location online. Unlike an ordinary URL, which breaks the moment a publisher reorganises its website, a DOI is designed to be persistent: even if the article moves, the DOI keeps pointing to it. That permanence is exactly what makes scholarship reliably citable over decades.
Most academic DOIs are registered through CrossRef, a non-profit registration agency that also links the reference lists between articles, powering the “cited by” connections you see across databases. Each publisher is assigned a numeric prefix — IJARST’s CrossRef prefix is 10.62226 — and every article receives its own suffix under it. When you cite a paper by its DOI, you are giving readers a link that should still work long after any web address has changed.
DOIs also carry structured metadata: the article title, authors, publication date and reference list all travel with the identifier. This is what lets tools automatically build accurate bibliographies and lets other researchers discover your paper through its connections. In practice, a DOI turns a static PDF into a well-connected node in the scholarly record — which is one reason serious journals invest in registering them for every article they publish rather than leaving papers as isolated web pages.
How do you check that a DOI is real and active?
You check a DOI by resolving it: paste the full identifier after https://doi.org/ in your browser, and a working DOI will redirect you straight to the article’s landing page. You can also search CrossRef’s public metadata to confirm the DOI is registered to the journal and article you expect. A DOI that fails to resolve, or that leads somewhere unrelated, is a genuine red flag.
For authors, a registered DOI on your published work is not a nicety — it is how indexing services, reference managers and other researchers reliably locate and credit your paper. It is one of the criteria we highlight when we explain how IJARST articles are indexed and made discoverable.
What does UGC-CARE mean in the Indian context?
UGC-CARE stands for the University Grants Commission’s Consortium for Academic and Research Ethics, and its central output is a reference list of quality, peer-reviewed journals maintained for the Indian academic community. The UGC created it to help scholars, faculty and evaluation committees distinguish credible journals from dubious ones, particularly for purposes such as academic promotions and research assessment where publication venue carries weight.
It helps to keep the terminology precise. Being UGC-approved — as IJARST is — signals that a journal meets recognised quality standards, and open-access journals like IJARST reinforce that with transparent processes such as double-blind peer review by two independent experts. The CARE reference list is a specific, periodically revised list, so authors should always confirm a journal’s current standing on the official UGC-CARE portal rather than relying on a static screenshot or an old claim.
Where does ORCID fit in for authors?
ORCID is a free, persistent digital identifier for you as a researcher — a 16-digit iD that stays with you across institutions, name changes and career moves. Where an ISSN names a journal and a DOI names an article, an ORCID names the author, ensuring that your body of work is attributed to you and not confused with another researcher who shares your name.
Registering at orcid.org takes a few minutes, and many journals now invite or require an ORCID iD at submission so authorship is unambiguous from the start. Adding yours is a small step that pays off across your whole publishing life. When you are ready to see how these identifiers come together in practice, review our aim and scope and the manuscript submission guidelines — and verify each credential for yourself before you commit your work to any journal.
