Guides: For Researchers: Evaluating Journals

Determining quality of a journal

Source: http://oaspa.org/principles-of-transparency-and-best-practice-in-scholarly-publishing/

More Resources for Evaluating Journal Quality

Open Access Journal Quality Indicators - from Grand Valley State University, these guidelines can help one evaluate open access publications as one considers appropriate publication venues, or invitations to serve as reviewers or editors. See also this article published in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication about the development of these guidelines.
JournalGuide - JournalGuide uses a “whitelist” approach, indexing known journals of quality and providing information on scope, how quickly the journal reviews and publishes papers, where the journal is indexed, open access options, page charges and more. JournalGuide also provides links directly to a journals “instructions for authors” page.
Directory of Open Access Journals - a community-curated list of open access journals and a good starting point for identifying quality, peer reviewed open access material. DOAJ also provides a "Best Practices" for publishers, which can be useful when evaluating journals for quality.
Harzing's Journal Quality List - this collated list of quality journals is based upon nearly 20 different rankings of more than 900 journals
"Dear Esteemed Author:" Spotting a Predatory Publisher in 10 Easy Steps - blog post from the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine that describes 10 things to consider when evaluating a scholarly journal

Peer review process: All of a journal’s content, apart from any editorial material that is clearly marked as such, shall be subjected to peer review. Peer review is defined as obtaining advice on individual manuscripts from reviewers expert in the field who are not part of the journal’s editorial staff. This process, as well as any policies related to the journal’s peer review procedures, shall be clearly described on the journal’s Web site.

Journals shall have editorial boards or other governing bodies whose members are recognized experts in the subject areas included within the journal’s scope. The full names and affiliations of the journal’s editors shall be provided on the journal’s Web site.

Journals shall provide the full names and affiliations of the journal’s editors on the journal’s Web site as well as contact information for the editorial office.

Any fees or charges that are required for manuscript processing and/or publishing materials in the journal shall be clearly stated in a place that is easy for potential authors to find prior to submitting their manuscripts for review or explained to authors before they begin preparing their manuscript for submission.

Copyright and licensing information shall be clearly described on the journal’s Web site, and licensing terms shall be indicated on all published articles, both HTML and PDFs.

Publishers and editors shall take reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, including plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication, among others. In no case shall a journal or its editors encourage such misconduct, or knowingly allow such misconduct to take place. In the event that a journal’s publisher or editors are made aware of any allegation of research misconduct relating to a published article in their journal – the publisher or editor shall follow COPE’s guidelines (or equivalent) in dealing with allegations.

Information about the ownership and/or management of a journal shall be clearly indicated on the journal’s Web site. Publishers shall not use organizational names that would mislead potential authors and editors about the nature of the journal’s owner.

A journal’s Web site, including the text that it contains, shall demonstrate that care has been taken to ensure high ethical and professional standards.

The Journal name shall be unique and not be one that is easily confused with another journal or that might mislead potential authors and readers about the Journal’s origin or association with other journals.

A journal shall have clear policies on handling potential conflicts of interest of editors, authors, and reviewers and the policies should be clearly stated.

The way(s) in which the journal and individual articles are available to readers and whether there are associated subscription or pay per view fees shall be stated.

Business models or revenue sources (eg, author fees, subscriptions, advertising, reprints, institutional support, and organizational support) shall be clearly stated or otherwise evident on the journal’s Web site.

Journals shall state their advertising policy if relevant, including what types of ads will be considered, who makes decisions regarding accepting ads and whether they are linked to content or reader behavior (online only) or are displayed at random.

The periodicity at which a journal publishes shall be clearly indicated.

A journal’s plan for electronic backup and preservation of access to the journal content (for example, access to main articles via CLOCKSS or PubMedCentral) in the event a journal is no longer published shall be clearly indicated.

Any direct marketing activities, including solicitation of manuscripts that are conducted on behalf of the journal, shall be appropriate, well targeted, and unobtrusive.