Nowadays, there are bunch of publishers of research journals. Many of those publishers are different from the conventionally established and mostly cited publishers. Yet, they claim as being high impact publishers and present quit high figures as their 'IFs'. Researchers particularly in the developing world complacently declare their articles being published in 'High Impact' journals, sometimes as high as 31 to 37 IFs as long as I have found (science stream). As such I can't doubt the claims and efforts such scientists have made in their research. But I am afraid, some of those journals, commonly not heard as existing are simply mocking researchers for making money (they often charge money from authors). This may eventually ruin someone's research efforts because of being a part of less trustworthy publisher. Amidst the claims of reasonable IFs and luring of comparatively easy acceptance of the articles, how could a beginner researcher make a good choice of a publisher?
How very true that new researchers have little space to publish. I have been publishing in the journals of my country that do good peer review but are not indexed by TR. There is no impact factor. I have sent to so called good journals, but they say that my paper is less relevant. So a researcher from the far East like me has education issues to talk about that are less relevant to journals in UK. They reject the paper, but they admit that there is merit in it. Of course all of us want journals that review our papers, and we are willing to do the amendments to improve the quality of the paper. There was an occasion when I sent a paper to an open access journal in India, and friends on RG who read the paper and understand the issues comment that it should be published in an 'acclaimed' journal; and a British prof said that he does not understand why a UK journal rejects that paper that has bearing on science education in my country as well as many other countries, where interest and intrinsic motivation to study science is on the decline. (It is interesting that Beall has expressed that there must be some equity concerning the issues in which researchers in DEVELOPING COUNTRIES are engaged,)
Your views are correct. I would suggest one way of judging the journal publisher. In the journal website the editorial board would give an idea of the value of the journal. From the academic caliber of all the members of the editorial board you can judge the journal.
What a great space to occupy! Most new researchers have no place to publish.
You did not indicate in your question to what field you are attached. In the physical sciences, (for example), your SCIENCE will trump the "popularity" or even, "rep" of a given journal. If you are publishing in a field outside of "science" (say in Higher Ed, Gender Studies, etc.) a good "mentor" in this area (in all, someone with whom you have worked AND whose work you follow in addition to someone with a career trajectory you respect.) could probably give you better guidance here. In fields where "results" are not easily "verified" how "respectable" your journal is, may matter.
In general, you might find this to be a good heuristic: As long as YOUR science is SOLID (i.e., your methods are well-defined, your research methodology rigorous, your results careful and significant ...) it matters less in which publication you choose to publish.
Checking there indexing and listing where the journal is in. This is the best way to check the quality of any journal. Normally journals with impact factors from TR are considered to be reasonable ones. Avoid paid journals.
How very true that new researchers have little space to publish. I have been publishing in the journals of my country that do good peer review but are not indexed by TR. There is no impact factor. I have sent to so called good journals, but they say that my paper is less relevant. So a researcher from the far East like me has education issues to talk about that are less relevant to journals in UK. They reject the paper, but they admit that there is merit in it. Of course all of us want journals that review our papers, and we are willing to do the amendments to improve the quality of the paper. There was an occasion when I sent a paper to an open access journal in India, and friends on RG who read the paper and understand the issues comment that it should be published in an 'acclaimed' journal; and a British prof said that he does not understand why a UK journal rejects that paper that has bearing on science education in my country as well as many other countries, where interest and intrinsic motivation to study science is on the decline. (It is interesting that Beall has expressed that there must be some equity concerning the issues in which researchers in DEVELOPING COUNTRIES are engaged,)
An obvious bit of negative advice: avoid the journals and publishers with known problematic reputation, in particular those on the Beall's list ( http://scholarlyoa.com/ ).
This might be field-dependent, but, at least as far as physics and mathematics are concerned, in most cases it makes sense to avoid journals and publishers (be they open access or not) that charge authors the publication fees. Note that there are open access journals which are free for both authors and readers (the so-called diamond open access model), for example SIGMA or Discrete Analysis (see the links below).
http://scholarlyoa.com/
http://www.emis.de/journals/SIGMA/
https://submissions.scholasticahq.com/sites/discrete-analysis
Dear Dr. Sergyeyev, and Dr. Miranda, Thank you very much for your response. The links are useful.
1. The history of the publisher
2. The indexation of other journals of the same publishers (Pubmed Indexed, Scimago, Embase, Thomso reuters)
3. Editorial Board of the same journal
4. Acceptance Rate
5. The timings of the first decision (the more the busier and better)
There are many predatory journals out there. they are mostly interested in milking the researchers of their monies! They recruit fake editors and practice all sorts of unthinkable!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_open_access_publishing
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