Publishing Support

Journal quality refers to a publication's scholarly rigor and reputation. Publishing in a well-regarded journal will increase your work's impact and possibly raise your professional profile. When assessing a journal's quality, consider:

• If the journal is ranked, is it highly cited and visible?
• In what databases is the journal indexed?
• Does the journal have a high rejection rate? A higher rate may be an indicator of prestige
• Does the journal have a rigorous and transparent peer-review process? 
• Are the editorial members experts within the scope of the journal?
• Does the journal have a low retraction rate?
• Are publications archived for posterity?
• Does the journal exhibit signs of being predatory?

It is helpful to familiarize yourself with the COPE Core practices, a set of international standards to ensure journal quality. 

Looking up a journal's impact factor can help discern its quality. The impact factor measures the frequency with which the "average article" in a journal has been cited in a particular year and helps researchers evaluate a journal's relative importance, when compared to others in the same field. Keep in mind that not all journals are ranked

Use the tools like Journal Citation Reports (JCR) below to evaluate impact factors:

For more information on journal impact and enhancing your publishing visibility, consult the Temple Libraries' Research Impact & Scholarly Credentials Guide.

According to Cress & Sarwer (2019) "Predatory publishing is an illegitimate open access publishing model whereby authors are invited to publish their work in less-than-reputable journals. Predatory publishers charge authors to publish their work, but do not provide a bonafide peer-review process. These fake journals are not indexed, generally do not have an Impact Factor, and typically have poor reputations in the community." Publishing in predatory journals can be a significant waste of effort and may damage your scholarly reputation

When assessing whether a journal is predatory, consider:

• Does the journal's output contain spelling or grammatical errors?
• Did the publisher approach you, the author, in an overly flattering manner?
• Does the journal transparently and verifiably detail its peer-review process? It's important to scrutinize the 'About' information on publisher websites

Sources: Cress, P. E., & Sarwer, D. B. (2019). Predatory Journals: An Ethical Crisis in Publishing. Aesthetic Surgery Journal Open Forum, 1(1), ojz001. 

Grudniewicz, A., et al. (2019). Predatory journals: No definition, no defence. Nature, 576(7786), 210–212. 

Source: Richtig, G., Berger, M., Lange-Asschenfeldt, B., Aberer, W., & Richtig, E. (2018). Problems and challenges of predatory journals. Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology, 32(9), 1441–1449. https://doi.org/10.1111/jdv.15039