The impact factor is not so much the question to me. Depending on your discipline, an impact factor of 1 or above may represent quality journals in that field. It's mostly online open access journals that charge an 'up-front' fee - and, often, they have a low (or no) impact factor. Personally, I think that the two combined is something to be 'wary' of.

What do you mean by valid?If you mean if it's correct, then you should know best ... If you mean that it can be counted as a publication for some purpose, you have to give more details for what the paper should be valid for.

respected Matthias, i mean (valid) can i add such paper in my resume.. will it be counted as a research article published in journals? does it give any credit to my resume?

From your question it seems that they are published as journal articles, so in principle you should be able to count them just fine.

But you seem to have doubts whether it is a reputable journal because of the fee. The main question is then: Did you get reviews, and did they seem like the reviewers put some effort in checking the papers? Did you have to provide revisions to fix the problems that the reviewers pointed out? There are journals that take fees for printing costs, overlength charges, or open access, so this is not suspicious per se.

If it looked like you paid for the publication, did not get any (meaningful) reviews, or that the journal seems to accept anything, then maybe the journal deceived you ... You should check if there are some complains about the journal on the web. Lately there seems to be an increasing number of fake just-for-profit journals.

But with an IF over 1 I doubt that the journal may be completely fake. What was the justification for the fee?

First of all we should be ethical in writing a paper, then choose an appropriate and indexed journal: After you get the paper published you blame the journal: its unethical

it is we who decide where to publish and not to plagiarise

In this era of open access and fast paced publishing : many publishers are in the market and are competing for publishing:

In my view many follow a well developed but for sure peer reviewed process before publishing eg: OMICS, SPG, SciEP, etc...

It is really heartening that after you paid and published in a journal you said was having IF (I have my doubts), now you ask whether to add it to your list

We must introspect on this issue

I am a big believer in self anti plagiarism, I choose journals well indexed and in all those I sent I received the best reviews for some I also paid but with excellent reviews eg: British journal of medicine and Medical Research (Science Domain Publishers) etc....

I would personally agree with Matthias's question of 'why did you pay'? The articles you had published are valid (back to your original question). They are published in the public domain. The question then comes back to 'who do you want then to be valid too'? In general terms - a publication is a publication - better than no publication at all. However, if it was for a new job vacancy or promotion etc - is would want to evaluate that publication closer - especially against the competition. Personally, I never submit to journals that have a fee. They are, generally, not traditional or established journals. As an employee - I would prefer your track record to be with 'traditional' non-fee paying journals - but that does not mean to say that those that are not are not 'valid'

Thomson Impact Factor of journals reflects the rate of which articles in any one journal is cited on the overage (total no. of citations divided by the total number of articles). Hence, it reflects to some degree the quality of the articles published in the article on the average and how the scientific community is receiving the articles in that journal. This does not mean that all articles published in the journal are of the same quality and it can happen that one publication goes without being citable or in other words even high impact journals can have articles of low quality or "invalid" as per your term.

My question to you is why you question whether your work can be described as "valid" or "not valid"?. Is that because you paid money for publication?. Well, it has to be of no relevance to such a journal with good impact factor because they have many waiting for publication and their reputation is important. For sure you get reviews and your article took some time for processing (as per question of Matthias) or else it is a rubbish journal and will lose its reputation soon. In other words, payment does not (in most cases of journals with such impact) reflect in your case negatively on your article. Alternatively, is it because some you believe that some results/ derivations/ methods/..etc are in error or not strongly validated?. No researcher can guarantee that his results are 100% error free. The journal reviewers may or may not pinpoint errors and results can even be faked !.

Please don not take this personally. It is only that your way of putting the question led to such general conclusions and you are really daring enough to tackle such an issue with reference to your own articles. You may, on the other hand, have actually published something really good for a journal of such a relatively high impact factor but you are underestimating your work. Others can judge your results later and impact factor for authors can be as well a good measure of how how your research (published in different places) is received by the scientific community. Wish you luck (or probably you are lucky man !.... Joking). Thanks. @AlDmour.

Good response Ismat. You cover quite a few issues that resonate with me. It's not a level playing field - but there are quite a few clues (especially from say good quality feedback on this site) - as to how to avoid a 'bad publishing situation'. Unfortunately, the less scrupulous journals have leant the art of 'preying on the inexperienced ' or those that have to 'publish anywhere'. Personally, I would like to think that their days are numbered though!!

thanks to all learned and eminent friends...

respected Ismat sir.. i never doubt my work.. even the paper i sent for publication was peer reviewed.. but a research scholar told me not to publish or even send my research articles to any of the online paid journals.. as such research articles published does not count good in my curriculum vitae... it made me tensed..till now i research articles.. out of which 8 are published in paid journals.. so i felt that 8 of my research papers doesn't count good....i thought of making mistake by sending my articles to them...

It is 'over-simplification' to suggest that it's a mistake to publish in these types of journals or that they do not count - but probably better to suggest that, currently, it is better to submit to established journals where you can

Dean. I agree that it not simple to oversimplify issues, but your advise of looking for well established journals is what ideally any one researcher should follow as possible. Thanks.@AlDmour

@gvs pranav kumar

1)if you have done your publication based on practical experimental model giving unique results not known till now, then it hardly matters where you publish sooner or latter world will accept it as it happened with me

2)i am not blind follower of ieee because these journals hardly takes into consideration fundamental research

3)if your work is simply review with existed simulator then it will hardly count even if it is ieee publication. If you need i will give you practical examples of my statement

@Pavan, please have a look at Beall's list of predatory publications. Some 'journals' offer IF that are not real but self-regulated. All researchers have to check for themselves, which publication they choose.

If you are sure that the number claimed is an ISI impact factor (whatever that means) or a SNIP (SCIMAGO) factor, you can use it in your CV.

I am now writing my current experience

Journal Research journal of pharmaceutical biological and chemical sciences

based in India, i get repeated request mails. thought why not send

I sent a paper in June, accepted after 10 days-no review result i had to pay 1500. i had many doubts. i chose not to and got it published in an international journal based in canada.

again i sent a paper 10 days back got acceptance and i am sorry that i again have withdrawn the paper.

believe me the journal publishes 600 papers per year. now APC is 2000

who is to blame. i have gone through some papers published in that journal and i found mistakes in references, no citation was proper

It is well indexed to my surprise

SCOPUS,CAS, EMBASE, NLM catalogue

Write a good paper, select a better journal, if charging ask for waiver, get review result improve the paper and get it published

I am sure if a journal follows all procedures it certainly gets indexed in later days and may be included for ISI Thompson impact factor

@Ramana KV..... I have also experienced the similar problems....In case of Indian journals displaying the journal was included in Elsevier, Scopus and Medline & showing Impact factor too in their respective sites.

The majority of established journals nowadays offer the option to pay an author fee. That is just to have your article published Open Access, making it free for all to read. Many of these journals are hybrid: you can publish for free or pay a fee for Open Access to your article.

With hybrid journals you cannot even tell by the name of the journal whether you paid a fee or not. Some fully Open Access journals asking fees are very well respected (e.g. the PloS Ones). Even Nature has Open Access journals asking fees. Howver the problem with paying a hybrid journal for open access is that your institution may pay twice: for the subscription and for your article APC.

The are also many good journals without fees or with very low ones. Check the DOAJ list of Open Access journals.

And by the way, some of the best non-Open access journals ask fees per page (esp. for grahics and tables). Whehter you paid or not has nothing to do with quality/standing of the journal of of your paper.

However beware of publishers that are just after your money. Be extra careful when you find that the publisher is on the Beall's list of predatory publishers. Also, the IF only has some value comparing journals within the same discipline. So a value of 1.5 is meaningless without knowing the discipline. And what is more: IFs cannot be used to judge individual papers. If you really want to compare journals across disciplines used the SNIP metric by CWTS (at http://www.journalindicators.com/)

So: do not worry and get the word out about your article!

Dear All

I agreed with your comments that the refereed journal and indexed journal are good for publishing, but just see the another face of coin basically the time taking policy of these journal, some of the journals just hold the articles for the 3-4 month without giving any response to the authors and sent back to it without publishing. some times it is very painful the  authors, mainly the students involved in the papers because especially in India this  delay almost  expands the PhD of any student more than 6 month, and expansion of 6 month means he have to survive without jobs or fellowships ultimately in crisis for a year. it also affects its life and family. 

Second thing of these journal is that their business making policies in the name of English and proof readings facilities. the minimum cost if 250$ which is to far from the reach of any Indian scholars getting 8000 rs per month.  

so it is my kindly request to all the editors and referees of the articles just speed up the reviewing process  and consider the scientific out put and contribution of paper rather than English and format styles or reference styles.

Kumar my topic is clinical. I also want to publish my article in impact factor journal who publish the article in short span of time no matter how much they charge as it is requirement of  the university. kindly don't ignore and help please

 dear please try IJPSR or IJPPS

kumar sb both of the journals u recommended are not in jcr list journal should be recognized in jcr list

Go for quality of journal whether it is open access(author has to pay publishing fee) or not(subscriber has to pay)

it is not valid. they should pay you. You are the author :)

The quality of a Journal is indicated by it's indexing. For technical journals SCI/SCOPUS indexing is considered as good. Try to publish in indexed journals.

I would like to ask one more question related to review time of manuscript. Some one from us has an experience regarding first review from journal "Journal of Computer Networks and Communications" , Hindawi. How much review time this journal take. Kindly, share your valuable experience.