ERIH Plus Indexing: Humanities Journal Application Guide

Reviewed by the NeucitePress Editorial Board — PhD academics, peer-reviewed journal editors and medical communication specialists.

Last updated: July 2026 • Reviewed by the NeucitePress Editorial Board • Reading time: 8 minutes

Humanities and social science (HSS) journals face a structural disadvantage in the indexing world: Scopus and Web of Science were built around citation patterns that fit the sciences far better than they fit history, literature, philosophy, or law, where books, national-language scholarship, and slower citation cycles dominate. ERIH PLUS — the European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences — was created specifically to address that gap. This guide explains what ERIH PLUS is, why it matters, exactly what it takes to qualify, how the application process works, and practical tips for a smooth submission.

What Is ERIH PLUS?

ERIH PLUS is a bibliographic index of academic journals in the humanities and social sciences. It began as ERIH (the European Reference Index for the Humanities), established by the European Science Foundation, and was substantially expanded and relaunched as ERIH PLUS in 2014 when responsibility moved to what was then NSD (Norwegian Centre for Research Data). Since July 2021, ERIH PLUS has been owned and operated by HK-dir, the Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills, via the site erihplus.hkdir.no. Unlike Scopus or Web of Science, ERIH PLUS does not rank journals by prestige or compute a journal-level impact metric; it is a listing service that documents which journals meet a defined set of scholarly-publishing criteria, with the explicit goal of increasing visibility for journals — including many national-language and smaller-circulation titles — that are otherwise hard to discover internationally.

Why ERIH PLUS Matters for Humanities and Social Science Journals

Coverage of HSS disciplines in Scopus and Web of Science is comparatively thin, and many respected humanities journals, especially those publishing in languages other than English or serving a national/regional research community, will never be a realistic candidate for those databases regardless of quality. For those journals, ERIH PLUS serves several concrete purposes:

• Recognition in national research-assessment systems: a number of European countries use ERIH PLUS listing (sometimes combined with national journal-ranking lists) as one input into how publications are counted for institutional funding or researcher evaluation.
• Discoverability: being listed makes a journal’s bibliographic metadata easier to find for researchers, librarians, and other indexing services scanning the landscape.
• A credible, low-barrier signal of legitimacy: because ERIH PLUS requires a defined set of transparency and peer-review criteria, inclusion offers authors a reasonable signal that a journal is a genuine, functioning scholarly publication — useful in fields where predatory publishing is a real concern.
• A realistic stepping stone: ERIH PLUS criteria are formal and largely objective (ISSN, peer review documentation, editorial board composition, publication history) rather than a subjective prestige judgment, which makes it a more attainable target for a new or specialized journal than Scopus or Web of Science.

It is worth being clear about what ERIH PLUS is not: it is not a quality ranking, and inclusion is not equivalent to being indexed in Scopus or Web of Science. ERIH PLUS itself has faced criticism in some quarters for being comparatively easy to enter since its criteria are largely formal rather than a qualitative assessment of content — which is by design, since its purpose is visibility and coverage rather than gatekeeping by prestige.

Eligibility Criteria

Per ERIH PLUS’s own published Criteria for Inclusion, only scientific/scholarly periodicals are evaluated (books, monograph series, and conference proceedings are not eligible). A journal must meet requirements in several categories:

• General: a valid ISSN confirmed via the International ISSN Portal; at least two years of active publication history (verified against the last two years of published issues); a minimum of five research articles per issue; abstracts in English (or another major international language relevant to the field) for all articles; and institutional affiliations listed for all authors.
• Website requirements: the journal’s ISSN, a complete editorial board listing with institutional affiliations and academic titles, and an online archive covering at least the last two years must all be publicly visible. The site must also clearly describe the journal’s aims/scope/audience, its peer-review process, its publication frequency (and demonstrate that the stated frequency is actually met), and its policies on ethics, copyright, plagiarism, open access, and article processing charges.
• Peer review: the review process must be described in specific detail on the website — a generic statement that “articles are peer reviewed” is not sufficient — and editors must have safeguards against conflicts of interest between authors and reviewers.
• Editorial board: at least three members, publicly listed with affiliations and titles; if the journal is published by a university or similar institution, at least one-third of the board must come from a different institution.
• Authorship diversity: author affiliations must be documented, and no more than two-thirds of authors published over the last two years can be from a single institution — a check against journals that function as an in-house institutional outlet rather than a genuinely open scholarly venue.
• European relevance: since ERIH PLUS specifically serves the European Research Area, journals are also assessed — qualitatively, not through a single fixed rule — on their thematic connection to European scholarship, their role for European-language research communities, or their integration into European academic networks (editorial board members, authorship, or audience with clear European ties).

The Application Process

ERIH PLUS applications are submitted directly through the platform rather than by email or postal application:

1. Read the published Criteria for Inclusion carefully before applying, since incomplete self-assessment against these criteria is a common cause of delay or rejection.
2. Create an account and log in to “My Page” on the ERIH PLUS site (erihplus.hkdir.no).
3. Complete and submit the application form, which asks for the journal’s bibliographic details, ISSN, publisher, editorial board information, and links to the pages on the journal’s own website documenting peer review, ethics, and other required policies.
4. Wait for evaluation, which is carried out according to the published Criteria for Inclusion and the platform’s separate Approval Procedures. Because the process largely checks documented, verifiable facts against a fixed checklist, journals that have done their homework on the website requirements beforehand tend to move through review more smoothly than those that have not.

Applications can be submitted by publishers, editorial board members, or others affiliated with the journal, including researchers or librarians who want to nominate a title. All required information must already be publicly available on the journal’s own website at the time of application — ERIH PLUS reviewers evaluate what is publicly documented, not private assurances from the applicant.

Practical Tips for a Smooth Application

• Fix the website first. Most rejections and delays come from missing or vague policy pages rather than from the journal’s underlying scholarly quality. Before applying, confirm that peer review, ethics, copyright, plagiarism, open access, and APC policies are all clearly published and easy to find.
• Write out the peer-review process in detail. State the review model (single-blind, double-blind, open), the typical number of reviewers per manuscript, and how conflicts of interest are handled — a one-line statement is not enough.
• Audit the last two years of issues before applying. Confirm that the journal actually met its stated publication frequency and article-count minimums during that period, since ERIH PLUS checks the historical record, not future intentions.
• List every editorial board member’s affiliation and title, and make sure at least one-third are from an institution other than the journal’s home institution if it is university-published.
• Think about European relevance honestly. If the journal’s connection to European research communities is not obvious from its scope, make that connection explicit in the application — through editorial board composition, published authors, or subject focus.
• Treat ERIH PLUS as one part of a broader indexing strategy, not a substitute for DOAJ (if open access), Scopus, or Web of Science further down the line. Many HSS journals pursue ERIH PLUS first precisely because its criteria are attainable early, then use that foundation to strengthen later applications elsewhere.

Sources

• ERIH PLUS — Criteria for Inclusion
• ERIH PLUS — Approval Procedures
• ERIH PLUS — Suggest a Journal (Submission Portal)
• Wikipedia — ERIH PLUS (history and governance)