There are some journals that are not indexed in the JCR. But, sometimes these publications are a good way to communicate your results to the scientific (and not scientific community). Is it useful to publish in these kind of journals?
There are two factors involved
1. Visibility. Scientists from poorer countries frequently do not have access to ISI rated journals. This means that these publications are not that frequently cited. It is a pity if the research could be useful to poorer countries and their scientists do not have access to ISI rated journals. Because many of these journals do not have page charges or handling fees, there is also a strong competition and a high percentage rejection.
2 Quality of the publications. Many journals publish manuscripts that add nothing to our sciebtific knowledge and may be totally useless. These plethora of new journals are only in the game to make money in my opinion. Frequently there are hardly any changes required on manuscripts. The difficulty is that good manuscripts are wasted if you publish here and you also do not get good critical comments that improves your manuscript.
Solutions
There are two solutions to this problem, either publish in open access journals that are ISI rated and will provide good comments on improving your manuscript. The page charges may be very high. The rejection rate may also be significant.
The second solution is to face the compettion and publish in an ISI rated journal with no page charges or handling fee. If the manuscript is accepted, then make the prepublication copy available on Research Gate or your Universities website. This will lead to a search engine like Google Scholar identifying your paper and to the manuscript being available for downloading immediately.
Your impact as a scientists will be determined by the quality of the journals that you used and your citations.
I am not a professional scientific author, but I think:
Yes! Publication is almost the best way to tell others and prove to the scientific community that you found something new.
JCR journals and specifically those journals with high JCR impact factors have a lot of manuscript submission and low acceptance rate. Although some of them are prestigious journals, but they are prone to have high levels of -hidden- biases in accepting articles (having tendency to certain fields of studies, tendency to accept articles from famous researchers or major research institutes, etc.).
therefore I think, if I have a novel finding and lack of time, it's better not to lose time by struggling with journals with high impact factors (or even sometimes any JCR indexed journals) -except when I am certain that I am lucky and have a high chance of being accepted.
I think any peer-reviewed journal with a fair respect among the scientific community will suffice to publish the results of a study. Just please completely forget about "throwaway journals"!
furthermore, with the magic of internet, theses days any article is accessible for a wide range of audiences and the chance of being cited is high even with publishing in a non-JCR indexed journal.
Good luck with your publications!
I am in full agreement with Siavash. Further, since I believe in no limitation for scientific findings availability, I prefer a journal with a bit lower IF but being open access.
Yes, I completely agree with you. But I think there is a problem. In our country for example to apply for funding it is desirable to have publications in journals with high IF. But it is true that the process to publish in these journals takes a lot of time (including the sending of your paper to several journals). What is preferable: the time of publication or the "impact" of the journal?
I also agree with you - it is more important to publish in open access journals than in journals which have a high IF. In any case, the IF is highly determined by cultural (linguistic, institutional, ...) conditions. In many regions and countries, this factor doesn't really play a significant role....
@ Elizabeth: I think the TIME is the most important factor in a scientist's life. Therefore it could not be neglected. However, having not enough resources or funding, is also wasting the time. Therefore, I think it worth to join a major researcher in your field of study. They know how to cope with the challenges of publishing articles in high IF journals. they could also give a good estimate for your chance of being published in a certain journal. If you are lucky to find some, it will really smooth the way for you. that's my idea!
There are two factors involved
1. Visibility. Scientists from poorer countries frequently do not have access to ISI rated journals. This means that these publications are not that frequently cited. It is a pity if the research could be useful to poorer countries and their scientists do not have access to ISI rated journals. Because many of these journals do not have page charges or handling fees, there is also a strong competition and a high percentage rejection.
2 Quality of the publications. Many journals publish manuscripts that add nothing to our sciebtific knowledge and may be totally useless. These plethora of new journals are only in the game to make money in my opinion. Frequently there are hardly any changes required on manuscripts. The difficulty is that good manuscripts are wasted if you publish here and you also do not get good critical comments that improves your manuscript.
Solutions
There are two solutions to this problem, either publish in open access journals that are ISI rated and will provide good comments on improving your manuscript. The page charges may be very high. The rejection rate may also be significant.
The second solution is to face the compettion and publish in an ISI rated journal with no page charges or handling fee. If the manuscript is accepted, then make the prepublication copy available on Research Gate or your Universities website. This will lead to a search engine like Google Scholar identifying your paper and to the manuscript being available for downloading immediately.
Your impact as a scientists will be determined by the quality of the journals that you used and your citations.
Hi,
First of all, it is important to point out that “not all articles that are published in IF journals are those of higher scientific quality” (indeed, some journals accept manuscripts because they cite several papers already published in these journals: accept manuscripts that will further improve their IF value) and, on the other hand, “not all articles published in journals without IF are those of lower scientific quality”. As response to the question of Elisabeth, I think it could be useful to publish an article in a journal without IF only if this last could ensure the two following key tasks:
- Offering an adequate peer-review provided by qualified referees who provide scientifically sound critical comments and improvements to the paper; it is suggested to avoid submit articles to journals (without IF) that accept manuscripts based only on the ability of authors to pay publication fees (financial rather than scientific reasons for accepting publication).
- Ensuring faster and open access publication of the accepted article (faster spread of original findings to the scientific community).
So, in other words, I think it will be a loss of time (it will not be useful for either authors or readers) to submit manuscripts to journals without IF that do not ensure both scientifically sound review and fast, open access publication.
Cheers
Well, a journal with a high impact factor is certainly more preferable. However, impact of an article is more important. What I mean is that more importance should be given to citations, and not really on the IF of a journal.
In mathematics in particular, there some very high class journals with low IF. The articles published in such journals are tough to understand, and people hardly go through such journals. In the process, some high class journals in mathematics have very low impact factors. So a journal in mathematics should not really be judged just by the IF.
Further, tigers are found in small jungles only! In a big forest, you may find all sorts of other animals, not a tiger!
I have read that 20% of the papers published in Nature (with an impact factor of 38.6) are never cited. This means that the information is not worth much or that workers in a specialized field do not read this genalist journal. Although the search engines make it easy to find publications in journals that you do no read I think it is important to select a journal that is focussed on your field of research.
Not only will your colleagues look at these journals more regularly, but the journal will also have a panel of reviewers and editors that understand the field and they will be able to evaluate the quality of your paper and make suggestions to improve it.
As Prof. Hemanta has rightly pointed out, a journal with a high impact factor (IF) is certainly more preferable. However, remember this IF is of the journal not of your article. IF of a particular article can be judged only by its citations ( see h- index). But here again we have problem the citations can be inflated by self citations or citation by relatives(!!).
Dear Professor Eloff,
20% of the articles in Nature are never cited! Well, this is quite an information. A journal with such a high impact factor includes articles that are never cited! This information should be included in Ripley's Believe It Or Not!
One should take note of Jacobus Eloff's comment above, to which I agree fully.
In my humble opinion - research material should be available to everyone, especially developing countries. I often wonder why Journals want to extract money from anyone who is interested in article in their journal, regardless of location. It's not like they are going to earn massive profits from those in any case. Perhaps this is part of why developing countries are locked into staying developing countries, because their researchers cannot afford the good quality stuff.
As a journal should not charge you to publish, in any case, (one cedes the rights to that Journal or if open access, you will pay), try publish in as heavy weight a Journal as possible.
Dear Ms. Elizabeth
Yes, I agree. I have published many of my papers in in local journals that reached the targeted readers. None of these journals have IF but are popular with the stakeholders in my field of research. My publications achieved their goal and me the satisfaction.
Best wishes.
The problem with some open access journals is that they are only in the business of making money not really of advancing knowledge. There is an amazing growth in the number of open access journals. I have been asked to review manuscripts for 214 different journals and invited to join editorial boards of 30 different journals. Many of these are of very low quality. If you have good results and you publish it in a low quality open access journal, the results may be ignored or your manuscript may not be improved by critical reviewers. If you send it to a commercial journal without page charges you may struggle to get it published, but you should learn from the good criticism on your manuscript. At least it is likely that it was properly reviewed. If it is accepted you can place the word document of the manuscript on researchgate to make it widely available via e.g. Google Scholar. Of course not all new open access journals are of low quality. The best advice is probably to have a look in which journals good papers in your field was published and target the same journals.
There are many peer reviewed, no IF, subscription-based journals published by professional scientific societies in different countries which are popular only in those countries. These journals focus on local problems and prefer research articles addressed to solving specific local or regional or national problems. Some journals are published by local universities and most of the papers are published by the students and professors of that university. Such journals have served their purpose of addressing and solving the local issues.
Dear Elizabeth
You may be interested in following and responding to the following threads on the same subject.
Best wishes
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Publish_and_perish_Patent_and_prosper_What_is_your_opinion
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_citation_index_a_true_reflection_of_a_scientists_success
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_publishing_in_high_impact_factor_journals_necessary_for_scientists
Dear
In my humble opinion, a scientist has to get an international visbility through publishing in ISI indexed journals with IF, and therfeore, working to knowledge dissemination (via impacted or not journals).
The problem is some ISI indexed journals with low IF are often local journals accepting publication from neighbouring countries. I experienced a journal in Bangladesh, and all my papers were rejected in few days without clear remarks. I searched the authors affiliation, and 90% were from Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and China????
I am a researcher at the Agricultural Research Council in South Africa. My research focus is on vegetable virology, bacterial diseases of potato, and fungal diseases of sweet potato. Most of my work is based on multiple phylogeny and NGS.
South Africa is in the unfortunate that it is too poor for the African continent, but as too rich for the first world, i.e. we do not qualify as a resource poor country. With the devaluation of the South African Rand, it has nearly become impossible to publish in high impact journals, since they are expensive.
I'm a researcher in one of the poor countries in Asia. I cannot afford for the publication fees in the ISI journals. So, settled for the non ISI journals, i have uploaded these papers through Researchgate. I'm happy because at least I'm still cited but not much.
I suggest the establishment of free to publish Journals that are accepted by all free researchers throughout the world. These Journals will just publish Science for Science out of any biased behavior. These Journals must be online, free to publish, free to access, and publish scientific articles without the biased consideration of the techniques and instruments applied. They have to publish scientific findings if they are rational and acceptable. This is the need for Science throughout the world especially for poor countries. These countries shall develop and get richer and this needs scientific research and investment on education from elementary to academic levels. Only a building or even the high-tech instruments are not enough. Education is also required. To be a famous Scientist does not mean to think rightfully and scientifically sound. For example, I had written an article to criticize the conventional confrontation test and to introduced the modified method for the study of the antagonistic interaction between two fungi. I had changed the methodology using controls for both fungi and introducing new parameters and index. My is able to reveal the resistance of a pathogenic fungus against a biological control fungus, and to give more rational data considering the time required for the effective control as well as the restriction of pathogen growth. Currently I work on its improvement. When I wanted to introduce the method, my article was rejected by one of the most famous Scientists in the world. He rejected my article for the reason that induction of plant resistance is the most important mechanism applied by Trichoderma fungi. My article was not to do something with that, my article just had paid to the method used in the study of antagonism between two fungi. Then, I published my article in the Journal of Biofertilizers and Biopesticides (with no impact). The method can give clues to the physiological and biochemical changes of the fungi, too (the subject of my second article that was also rejected by one of the most famous Journals related to biological control). Then, a new system is needed if Science is to be published. This system must be international and non-governmental to remain scientific (non-politic, and clean from mafia of some editors that only publish the articles from their own band and other band(S) if they are of mutual interests!!!) and to provide the equal opportunity for all Researchers from whole Countries. The online and limit-less publication of the articles with a bold emphasis on the publication of scientific data (obtained by a researcher) will inhibit this mafia development and dirty favoritism. This will help Scientists to bloom without being restricted by the penetrative Persons who misuse their power to support some Researchers against Others. The Journals must follow the unique, simplest and easiest guidelines for publication to respect the time and health of the authors behind computers. I think these are the principles for free flow and publication of scientific data and I wish the capable scientists will help to develop such a global system that must be respected and appreciated by Local Governments that currently look for IF and local Journals. This is a great task on the shoulders of the Scientists who think of global development of Science.
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