Wherever you publish, steer clear of what Jeffrey Beal refers to as ‘predatory journals’

He maintains a list of these journals online, at: http://www.academia.edu/1151857/Bealls_List_of_Predatory_Open-Access_Publishers

See also: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/technology/Blinded+scientific+gobbledygook/9757736/story.html

These publishers are not the slightest bit interested in the quality or novelty of your work, but only want your money.

Journals that publish reviews "by invitation only" can usually be contacted, and if you have a good proposal, they will consider it seriously. It is quality and novelty they are after.

Aim for the best journals in your discipline. If your manuscripts never get rejected, you don't aim high enough. That is what I keep telling myself and my students.

Wherever you publish, steer clear of what Jeffrey Beal refers to as ‘predatory journals’

He maintains a list of these journals online, at: http://www.academia.edu/1151857/Bealls_List_of_Predatory_Open-Access_Publishers

See also: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/technology/Blinded+scientific+gobbledygook/9757736/story.html

These publishers are not the slightest bit interested in the quality or novelty of your work, but only want your money.

Journals that publish reviews "by invitation only" can usually be contacted, and if you have a good proposal, they will consider it seriously. It is quality and novelty they are after.

Aim for the best journals in your discipline. If your manuscripts never get rejected, you don't aim high enough. That is what I keep telling myself and my students.

Well, nicely put Mr. Lambers.

Anyway, our generation should stop publishing their cutting edge research for a simple reason, it's plain robbery. The entire IP protection system is designed to work against the scientist crazy enough to publish and keep him away from the big juicy stake.

Is there anyway to get some benefits if someone uses your hard work to make millions? Not really. You may not even get any recognition, as it would mean to share benefits with you.

Just imagine a lab using your work to skip some costly steps towards their goals. They will save millions, and maybe not even remember they used your article to do that. If some big shot from that lab will publish something, you may get a citation, but that will not pay your bills.

Even worst, you publish in some obscure journal a great idea. It is widely ignored. At some point, some other guy publishes the same idea, in a more visible journal, years later, and collect all recognition for it. He may not plagiarize, he may just reach the same conclusion, even by different means, but years later.

So, if you cannot imagine making a profit from your ideas, publish them in a good journal, it's the lesser evil.

So i would summarize:

1. Sell your research

2. Publish only work you cannot sell

3. Use good journals to publish

A good journal is a journal read by the people you want to notice you. Citations are nice, because for some obscure reasons scientometrists believe that, and universities tend to hunt citations producers to get better rankings. I suppose it would be a useful indicator, but only if nobody would know about-it.

@Hans, thank you so much for this precious advice and the nice article. I enjoyed going through the article and became sad at the same time, indeed, because I realized that I have become a prey once for one of those journals mentioned in the article. I didn't pay attention for that (by that time) because I didn't expect that somebody can cheat even online. I thought that it is possible to cheat on paper in some countries where is no copyright rules, but online? that astonished me.

Thank you again for the advice and I will work hard to find out the best real (scientific) peer-reviewed journal to publish my article away from "predatory journals".

@Bradut, Thank you so much. You put it nicely as well. I strongly agree with your summary. And I think it is the best way.

Cheers,

Mustafa

You can check the review time of the journals and find journals with a balance between impact factors and review period. I have seen some very good journals in my field with a rapid review time.

The quickest ones are the ‘predatory journals’; they tend to accept your manuscript within days. They even fabricate their ow impact factors.

The question was about review papers, right? Then it is quite tricky to publish a review paper in a top journal unless you have personal contacts with some editors or you are yourself from a "top lab".

As an alternative, avoiding "predatory" publishers, of course, for a good quality review paper I can suggest Environmental and Experimental Biology: no charges (no SCI coverage though), scientific review, free Internet access, quite a number of references to the papers.

You can take a look at http://eeb.lu.lv

I am the Editor of this one.

I don't see any reason, why one should publish in "low" impact journal! Oh, wait, there is one reason - if your motto is "the more, the better"! But I do not understand, why there are people, who care so much about the quantity not quality?!?! For some people the only criteria is the following - it will do, as long as the article is on (in?) Scopus or WoS. But there are journals in Scopus with only 5 % rejection rate....

I better write one article in "high" impact journal than five articles in "low" impact!

By the way - what is low or high impact journals for you? Do you use The SCImago Journal & Country Rank (http://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php?category=2312), where you can see, which are the TOP journals and all the journals (by subject category) are divided in quartiles? Other ideas?

Dear Gederts,

I would consider that a solid outlet, for sure. However, I would be a bit more optimistic when it comes to "top journals". If an author has a bit of a reputation in a discipline and produced a good piece of work, editors will often be keen to consider publication. As Editor in Chief of Plant and Soil, I look at all proposals. If the review is timely and the authors write with authority, I would be willing to seek input from reviewers and base my decision on the feedback I received.

Regards,

Hans

PS - I am pleased to see that my comment on 'predatory journals' was picked up and appreciated. None of us should waste our resources or time on any of them.

There are good journals which do not ask for publication fees. What some of us cant stomach is that the review takes 3 to 6 months. But there are some good journals with rapid review time. May be Universities should have an inventory of journals that they encourage their faculty to publish in. But also remember that there are local journals who may not have impact as yet and are not reputable; still they need support by submitting to them so that one day they are also reputable journals. Not that they should publish low quality work.

@Mozhgan, thanks for the advice, but I am not really worrying about the time of revision. What I am looking for is a good journal with low or free publication charges.

@Gederts, thanks a lot for referring me to this nice journal. I would consider it for sure and tell others about it. I've gone through some articles published in this journal, they were really cool and I expect this journal to have IF soon.

Thanks

@Artis , the IF that I am talking about is JCR scale, not from SCImago.

Thanks

@Othusitse, I agree with your idea of publishing in local journals, but the problem is many of those journal use languages rather than English, and many others are not available online. For us, it is important to publish your work in a place that is available for all researchers and institutions in order to get credit for your work, so that nobody can republish your work and get the benefit from it.

Cheers,

From my point of view I am refering to local journals which publish in English and are online. Yes, the journal is obscure then chances are someone may steal and plagairise your work without the scientific community knowing about it. Local journal shout strife to go online. These reputable journals were once local journals but grew because they were supported by authors.

Dear Hans,

I am more than happy to hear that.

Regards,

Gederts

@Artis, I agree with you in the most part of your ideas, but what if you publish your five papers in trusted scientific journals with no impact factor and have your work online? Don't you think that you will have the same visibility for your work and, at the same time time, five papers instead of one? I am just arguing if such idea is wrong. In y opinion, the visibility of your work to a biggest number of researchers all over the world is more important than having a paper in a journal with high IF.

Thanks,

Mustafa

If there was a "highly visible" journal without IF, I would publish in it, but... I do not know that there is such a journal. And on the other hand - in my country (Latvia) I have to publish my work in journals, which are in Scopus or WoS, if you want to get a scholarship or other grants. The sad thing is that sometimes no one cares about he quality of the work as long as it is in these databases...

What is your topic, Mustafa, and what are these journals?

@Artis, My major is plant pathology, and some of those journals are (Plant protection science, Horticultural Science (HORTSCI), Plant, Soil and Environment (PSE), Phytopathologia Mediterranea, Plant Pathology Journal (Pakistan) and all of them are indexed in SCOPUS). I have published in some of them and always put in mind sending some future papers to the others.

You can check them out.

Good luck,

Mustafa