LibGuides: Faculty Resources: Predatory vs Professional Journals

Workshop Handouts

h-index

h-index is the maximum value of h such that the given journal has published h papers that have each been cited at least h times

Predatory vs Professional Journals

Identifying Predatory Journals

Journal Evaluation Tool
Includes a rubric and scoring sheet that can be used to review a journal to determine if it is a credible publication.
Stop Predatory Journals
Maintains lists of potentially predatory journals, hijacked journals, and predatory publishers. Also includes possibly misleading and fake metrics. Not active since 2018.
Think. Check. Submit
Designed to help researchers identify trusted journals for their research through a range of tools and practical resources.
How to Spot a Predatory Journal (checklist)

Journal Directories

Cabell's Journalytics This link opens in a new window
A curated database of critical information about reputable academic journals, as well as Predatory Reports that identify deceptive and fraudulent journals. Manuscript preparation tools and a suite of metrics are designed to help researchers find the right journals.
Directory of Open Access Journals This link opens in a new window
DOAJ is a collection of open access journals.
Journal Citation Reports This link opens in a new window
Provides Journal Impact Factors for a systematic, objective means to critically evaluate journals.

Scopus Sources Preview
Scopus Preview is a large abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature: scientific journals, books and conference proceedings. It provides CiteScore impact factors and other data points that can be used to evaluate journals.

UlrichsWeb Global Serials Directory This link opens in a new window
Directory of academic and scholarly journals, Open Access publications, peer-reviewed titles, popular magazines, newspapers, newsletters, and more from around the world.

Manuscript Matching Tools

Enter your manuscript's title and abstract and other requested information and these systems will identify journals that are best suited for publishing. Each resource provides journal information and additional information such as impact factors, publishing model, time to publication, etc.

These tools search the journals of the individual publisher.

Elsevier Journal Finder
IEEE Publication Recommender
Journal/Author Name Estimator (JANE) - PubMed
Sage Journal Selector
SpringerNature Journal Suggester
Taylor & Francis Journal Suggestor
Web of Science Manuscript Matcher
You will need to create a free account to access Match.
Wiley Journal Finder (Beta)

Evaluating Open Access Titles and Publishers

WOS: A researcher’s complete guide to open access papers
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
A community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals.
Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)
List of COPE member publishers who have agreed to follow the COPE Code of Conduct for Journal Editors.
Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)
A directory of academic open access books.
OASPA Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing

Journal Metric Tools

Journal Citation Reports This link opens in a new window
Evaluate and compare journals using citation data in areas of science, technology, and social sciences.

The Journal Impact Factor (JIF) gives a measure of the frequency that the average article in a journal has been cited in a particular year. This metric is updated once a year.

Cabell's Journalytics This link opens in a new window
Formerly known as Cabell's Whitelist, Journalytics is an independent, curated database of scholarly journals that guides researchers, publishers, librarians, academics, and administrators to the publications they need. Journalytics provides complete contact and publication information, multiple quality metrics, submission experience data, and peer review indicators.

In addition to the journals database, contextual metrics such as the Cabell's Classification Index©, the Difficulty of Acceptance©, and the Institutional Publishing Activity© are powerful tools designed to help researchers search, filter and compare journals when making decisions about publication and to assist administrators in evaluating publication records. Explanations of the Journal Metrics can be found at http://www2.cabells.com.dax.lib.unf.edu/metrics

Additionally, there is a searchable database of deceptive and predatory academic journals.

Google Scholar Metrics
Provides a way for authors to gauge visibility and influence of recent articles in scholarly publications. Includes English language publications only. Google Scholar provides a journal ranking based on the number of citations that papers recieve. The rankings are based on the h5-index and h5-median. The h5-index is the largest number h such that h articles publicshed in the journal for the three previous years have at least h citations each.
Scopus Sources
Provides a list of titles on Scopus. Includes CiteScore, SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Paper), SJR (SCImago Journal Rank).

The CiteSource calculates the average number of citations received in a calendar year by teh number of items published by the journal in the previous three years. All items are included in the denomiator.
The SNIP metric measures the average citation impact of the publications of a journal and corrects for the differences in citation patterns between fields. The impact of a single citation will have a higher value in subject areas where citations are less likely, and vice versa.

SJR: Scimago Journal & Country Rank
Analyzes journal and country rankings for Scopus journals. THe SJR metric ranks journals by atempting to account for the number of citations received by a journal and also the importance of the journals from where the citations originated.
Journal Metric Comparisons