Evaluating journals for publication
Evaluating scholarly journals or conferences before submitting work for publication or presentation is a critical step in ensuring that your scholarship and research reaches an appropriate audience and is made an indelible part of the scholarly record.
Ultimately, the decision about where to submit work for publication rests with you, the author. However, librarians can assist you by providing resources to help identify and assess positive and negative indicators of journal quality or legitimacy. Librarians can also help you understand which abstracting and indexing databases a questionable journal may (or may not) be included in.
While librarians cannot make final determinations as to the quality or legitimacy of specific journals, conferences, or publishers, your subject librarian can provide assistance with understanding the following criteria and resources:
Tips for evaluating journals, publishers and conferences:
- Think. Check. Submit. Journal checklist and Think. Check. Attend. Conference checklist
- Perish even if you Publish? The problem of 'predatory' publishers (University of Cambridge)
- Tips for assessing publisher quality and conferences (University of Minnesota Libraries)
- Open Access Journal Quality Indicators (Grand Valley State University Library)
Resources for looking up a specific journal or publisher:
- Journal Citation Reports: Use for traditional quality metrics of specific journals.
- Cabell's (available for Business publications): Use for traditional quality metrics of specific journals.
- Ulrich’s Periodical Directory: Use to look up background information on specific titles, i.e., peer-review, indexed in what databases, and publisher contact information.
- Directory of Open Access Journals: Use to look up open access journals.
- COPE (Members and Publisher search): Check to see if a journal or publisher supports and meets the minimum criteria of COPE's Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing.
- OA Scholarly Publishers Association (Members list): Check to see if a purported OA publisher supports and has met OASPA's membership criteria.