NCR – Nordic Concrete Research is a biannual scientific journal owned by NCF – the Nordic Concrete Federation. The operation is delegated to RCNCF – the Research Council of NCF.
NCR is published by Sciendo, a De Gruyter Brill Group company with head office in Poland, with publishing and distribution solutions for scientific journals (120+), books and conference proceedings.
NCR offers peer-review scientific publishing to authors with a Nordic affiliation.
Open Access & funding
NCR is an Open Access (OA) periodic, i.e. there is no subscription fee. NCR is currently also without any article processing charge (APC) for authors who want to publish. The publishing including the editorial function amounts to appr. €20.000 per year and is sponsored by the national Nordic concrete associations and the industry. The peer-review team consists of volunteers within our Nordic community and receives no compensation.
NCR objectives & Status
NCR targets Nordic authors and offers a fast peer-review publishing service. Articles in NCR improves the visibility of on-going research between scholars in the Nordics and to the industry. Authors in NCR enjoys academic credits/ranking at some of our Nordic universities.
It is no secret that some prefer publishing with more prestigious journals. However, it is also a fact that the processing time and hurdles of such journals may be too demanding for many authors, in particular PhD candidates in need for enough publication acceptances within a given timeframe. PhD candidates constitute a main target group for NCR.
The non-compensated voluntary peer-review process ensures an efficient quality assurance of the articles and contribute to the low-cost business model of NCR as well as the authors’ exposure to the community and networking.
People read NCR! The number of article downloads in the period July 2024 to June 2025 amounts to almost 4.000. The Clarivate metrics of 2024 for NCR are ready: Impact Factor = 0.7 and Journal Citation Indicator = 0.11. By publishing in NCR and citing (in NCR or elsewhere), you can contribute to our community and to the future of NCR.
What Sciendo does for NCR
We have renewed our three-years agreement with Sciendo for the third time. This agreement contains several services, such as
- Providing a journal webpage including production (incl article DOI numbering), hosting and distribution of NCR
- Online submission, editorial and peer-review platform
- Plagiarism detection tool
- Marketing such as incl pre-evaluation of NCR for Scopus, Clarivate and listing on DOAJ – the Directory of Open Access Journals, indexing by Google and other search engines, distribution to libraries, preservation services
The reviewers of NCR
The team of reviewers is a very valuable “asset” of NCR and a prerequisite for our reputation. Their services and fast feedback regarding acceptance and processing are key for our rapid production. The “best producing reviewers” during the last period may expect some attention at the banquet.
Avoid Predatory journals!
Several authors have impaired their reputation by publishing in predatory journals as a way of improving their merits. Such journals present themselves as academic journals but have a poor or fake peer-review process, saving production costs and mainly targeting profit. Use well-known journals only!