Of course. I was involved in starting several scientific periodicals, and a decent new journal can easily check most of the boxes on https://thinkchecksubmit.or

Of course. I was involved in starting several scientific periodicals, and a decent new journal can easily check most of the boxes on https://thinkchecksubmit.org https://thinkchecksubmit.org right away: publish contact and publisher info, spell out the reviewing policy and ethics guidelines, apply to be included in DOAJ, etc. Getting into Scopus or Web of Knowledge is a bit trickier: you must show that you can consistently publish on schedule, so you need to find people willing to submit articles for the first several issues, i.e. articles that would be properly indexed only much later on (inclusion into Scopus and WoK works retroactively). The only real barrier to starting a new journal is having enough standing in the community to make people believe that the journal is here to stay and having enough money and human resources to maintain a website.