Jeffery Beall in his work Beall's List contributed immensely in pointing out predatory publishers and the criteria for identifying them. Even though some researchers criticized the work, but at least it contributed much in the creation of awareness by the researchers as well as improvement of quality and standardization by many publishers. Following judicial issues and pressure from various groups, Beall's List was finally dimmed. Now, how can a researcher identify a genuine journal from the predatory publishers?
The peer review is one of the way to identify the journals' quality or genuineness. The feed back one get as reviewers comment and the subsequent revision and rejection etc are the indicator to decide a journals authenticity. To share personal experiences: a journal who promised to publish my article within a month without even seeing the article.
Also one can go through previously published articles, publisher detail and publishing policy before submission.
Beall's list has been updated at http://beallslist.weebly.com/ and is still useful. I especially like the Think Check Submit suggestions to guide journal selection.
Dear Mustapha,
You have raised a very timely question. This is a very common confusion among many researchers, where to submit their work.
There is no doubt that Beall's list is very much helpful in avoiding the predatory journals. The journals listed there on the list have the very nature of predatory journals.
Coming to your question, I agree with Maitrayee Ghosh, definitely, the nature of peer review and the standard they keep in that are the crucial indicators.
Avoid journals which charge huge amount of money, offers fast peer review (may within a week), and highlight HIGH impact factors (Usually it is fake).
You can go ahead with those journals indexed in reliable indexes. but you must confirm their argument of indexing is true or not.
my recent paper discusses some of these crucial issues. you may access the same at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318350709_ACADEMIC_WRITING_AND_PUBLISHING_IN_INDIA_IS_QUALITY_A_TOUCHSTONE
- Azeez
Article ACADEMIC WRITING AND PUBLISHING IN INDIA: IS QUALITY A TOUCHSTONE?
The smartest, or at least, quickest, move is to ask your more experienced colleagues.
@Mustapha UMAR, I will recommend you study the guidelines provided by Jeffery Beall, it will be of help to you.
Secondly, go for Journals that are indexed in Pubmed. As much as possible, avoid India Journals.
To avoid prey of always falling victim of predatory journal, please make do with the journals enlisted under
1. Elsevier
2. Hindawi
3. Science Direct
4. PLOS
5. MDPI
Thank you.
If you already have the title and abstract for your article, you can use the following tools from Elsevier and Springer to help you pick a right journal among those that belong to the respective publisher
http://journalfinder.elsevier.com http://journalsuggester.springer.com
The output of these tools shows inter alia average article processing times and impact factors of the journals and, if I recall correctly, also publication fees and open access fees.
In many journals you can publish free of charge if you do NOT make your article open access (i.e. it is available only to journal subscribers), but this should be checked for each journal separately.
Once you make a short list of potentially suitable journals, you can check whether they are covered by Scopus here
https://blog.scopus.com/posts/titles-indexed-in-scopus-check-before-you-publish
and by Web of Science here
https://mjl.clarivate.com
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