In India, 'NAAS ratings' is considered to select a Journal for publishing a paper. A NAAS rating of more than 6.0 is preferred.

Most of the numerical measures and A&I databases you have mentioned are based on the number of citations, or they are known as citation based metrics. They will show you only a one side of the problem (i.e. popularity or prestige of the target journal). Why don't we think about other requirements like, time for publishing, readership, collaborators, access method, age and so on. The following work discusses this problem in detail:

https://edoc.hu-berlin.de/handle/18452/20889

Hello,

I would suggest you try the "journalfinder" tool for elsevier journals. You just need to copy into the boxes the title and abstract of your research and the webesite will mach to many different journals. The results will be the best match, along with other important info such as average time to first decision, publication time, APC for open access papers. Hope it helps. https://journalfinder.elsevier.com/

Humberto Santos

Thanks you Humberto Santos . I shall do it.

Dear Swaminathan Chitraputhira Pillai ,

Selection of the right journal requires some time and effort. One aspect is indeed assessing the quality of a journal.

Obviously it is clear that journals that are published by the big players in the scientific literature are reasonably safe to publish your work. We all know the publishers of subscription, hybrid and open access journals: Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, Oxford University Press, ACS Publications and many more. A number of open access publishers are nowadays also established publishers: PloS, BMC central, MDPI, Hindawi and Frontiers journals.

However there are especially in the field of open access journals and publishers a lot of more players active. A number of the following indexing and/or inclusions in databases are the best possible guarantee that you are dealing with a genuine and reasonably good journal in terms of quality:

-Impact factor: Provided by Clarivate (WoS). This (SCIE indexing) is the best parameter for journal quality and the assurance you are dealing with a genuine journal (and not a predatory one).

-Impact factor/Cite score: Provided by Scopus. Almost as good as the above mentioned impact factor. Personally I rank them second because I see that some journals are indexed in Scopus and not (yet) in SCI or ESCI index from Clarivate. Apparently Scopus is somewhat more generous when it comes to inclusion in their database.

-ESCI: Provided by Clarivate. This emerging SCI index is a potential step towards full inclusion in the SCIE index and the release of an impact factor.

-PubMed: Of course only applicable in the field of Life Sciences, but inclusion in this database is a pretty solid parameter in the assessment of the quality of a journal.

-UCG approval: Initiative from India that uses strict criteria for the approval of journals. See for further info: https://www.ugc.ac.in/journallist/

-DOAJ: For open access journals, in particular for smaller publishers and so-called stand-alone journals, a membership and/or inclusion in their database is often used as a sort of ‘white-list’ for ‘safe’ journals.

-DOI/Cross ref: Check whether paper have an assigned a DOI. This is not only important for identifying the correct paper and so on but it is a prerequisite for getting an indexing in the serious indexing and database services.

-Google Scholar: Not so much a sign of quality but important in terms of visibility. A substantial number of researchers (including myself) use google scholar for literature searches and keeping themselves up-to-date.

There are journals that are not yet established and work hard to get one or more of the above indexations. Among these journals there are so-called predatory journals and one can search for “predatory”, “fake journal” or “Beall’s list” and you see a lot of questions and discussions on this topic. It is important to at least avoid publishing in such journals and indeed use a number of described indicators to assess on whether you are dealing with a good and solid journal.

Hope this answers your question to some degree.

Best regards.