Assess journals and publishers

There are several ways to check and investigate a periodical’s reliability and assess its quality. Some unreliable publishers (called predatory publishers, preying publishers or questionable publishers) wage aggressive campaigns to entice authors. The quality of some periodicals is inferior, even though they have serious intentions.

  • Ulrichsweb allows you to determine whether the journal is peer review, how often it comes out and if it’s indexed in any database.
  • Is the periodical from an open access publisher? In DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals), you can search for serious open access journals.
  • Is the publisher a member of OASPA (Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association)? If the publisher is included in OASPA, it has gone through a rigorous application procedure.
  • Is the periodical included in the Norwegian list? The Publication Channels database lists periodicals and publishers approved by the Norwegian Centre for Research Data. Rating level 1 represents scholarly periodicals and level 2 leading scholarly periodicals within their disciplinary domain.
  • In Cabell's Predatory Reports academic journals are analysed by a set of criteria to help authors to identify questionable and unprofessional journals.
  • Think Check Submit is a campaign supported by several organisations and publishers of scholarly publications.
  • Quality indicators for open access journals (University of Borås) assists you with a fast quality assessment of a periodical. 
  • Are you a researcher in bioethics? Where to publish and not publish in bioethics lists a number of periodicals that you can and cannot publish in within this discipline.
  • For a quick first assessment of journals, we recommend that you use the LIU Journal Check Up, developed by Linköping University Library

Assessing conferences

Both conferences and publishers can aggressively market themselves. Have you been invited to a conference that you need to know more about? Think Check Attend lets you assess the conference with the help of simple questions.

Last modified: 2023-02-15
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