The Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine has announced a new selection of academic journals for inclusion in the List of Recognized Scholarly Publications in accordance with Order No. 56 (January 2026). This is an important stage for editorial teams planning to confirm or obtain the status of a recognized scholarly journal and to ensure compliance with modern standards of academic quality and openness.

In this context, the team of Open Science in Ukraine—an initiative aimed at providing comprehensive support to academic journals in the digital environment—has prepared a practical checklist for scholarly journals. The document will help editorial boards systematically assess the readiness of their website and editorial policies before submitting an application to the Ministry of Education and Science, as well as align with the requirements of international open access databases, in particular the Directory of Open Access Journals.

The checklist covers the following key areas:

• proper design and structure of the journal’s homepage;
  
• composition and compliance of the editorial board;
  
• availability of required policies (publication ethics, open access, AI policy, archiving, etc.);
  
• author guidelines and peer review procedures;
  
• correct formatting of article PDF files;
  
• publication volume indicators and authorship structure;
  
• technical requirements for the website platform (including the use of Open Journal Systems);
  
• currency of the current issue and archives.