Hi Smriti. Even though these X journals (also called mirror journals) are essentially the same as the original journal, only changing the business model to open access, they have a different ISSN. Having a different ISSN means it is another journal; hence, it must still go through the review process of Web of Science to be included in the database and to receive an Impact Factor.

Dear Smriti Mukherjee , The companion journals are (most of the time) relatively young (new) titles. Getting an index in Clarivate’s SCIE/SSCI takes a couple of years and is preceded by indexing in their ESCI. Take for example Food Chemistry (CiteScore 13.1 and IF 9.231) https://www.journals.elsevier.com/food-chemistry that has started not one but even three companion journals:

-Food Chemistry X (CiteScore 5.4 and IF 6.443) started in 2019 https://www.journals.elsevier.com/food-chemistry-x APC 2240 USD (while Food Chemistry charge for their open access a staggering 4170 USD but this is optional)

-Food Chemistry: Molecular Sciences (CiteScore 0.6 and ESCI indexed in 2022) started in 2020 https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/food-chemistry-molecular-sciences till 31 December 2022 APC 1000 USD after that APC will be 2000 USD

-Food Chemistry Advances (just started in 2022 so no index yet) https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/food-chemistry-advances till 30 June 2023 for free (after that APC 1750 USD)

Advantages are:

-It is like the transfer service that some publishers offer a way to speed things up. If rejected for the ‘mother’ journal all possible peer review is transferred to one of the companion journals

-The relatively young titles are less expensive (for open access)

-The companion journal profit from the reputation, infrastructure etc. of the well-established title and most likely will receive indexing relatively soon

Disadvantages are:

-It might be perceived as “your manuscript is not good enough for the ‘real’ title". Although one must acknowledge that a traditional subscription-based journal has ‘space limitations’ and simply cannot publish everything (even if good enough) despite the growth in submissions

-There is no guarantee that the new title will be successful (although I honestly don’t know examples where the companion journals were not 'successful')

So, yes in most cases the companion journals will receive a full indexing and compared to fully new titles this indexing happens relatively soon.

Best regards.

Thank you, Rob Keller , Luisa Veras de Sandes-Guimarães and Nagendra Nath Das

Thank you for your answer Venkataraghavan Ragunathan