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Academic Publishing Support

Journal Reputation

Looking for a place to publish your work can be overwhelming. Not only do you have to find somewhere that matches your needs, but you want to make sure you are publishing in a reputable, well-respected publication that won't take advantage of you and your work. 

Reputation Evaluation

A legitimate journal, regardless of publishing model, will openly communicate information about their publication. Ultimately, they are marketing their publication to you as both a reader and a potential author. Therefore you want to take into consideration some of the following information:

  • Journal Information - Whether found on an "About", "Mission", or "History" page, you should be able to determine the specific topic focus of articles they publish as well as get an idea about how long the journal has been in publication. 
  • Editorial Board - the editorial team is often named along with their institutional affiliation and their credentials. You should double check the names and institutions of the individuals to ensure they are accurate and qualified.
  • Indexing - libraries and database publishers do their best to ensure access to quality information. You can search for the title of the journal in the library's resources or other trustworthy databases to see if the journal shows up. 
  • Submission & Peer Review Process - You should be able to clearly identify submission guidelines, what happens to your research after it is submitted for consideration, what rights you would retain if accepted for publication, a general idea of how long the decision will take and what costs there may be to you as an author.

There are several ways that journals and articles are ranked, and it is important to understand the most common ones as a way to both promote your work as well as the work of others.

What is a predatory publisher?

A predatory publisher is an opportunistic publishing venue that exploits the academic need to publish but offers little reward for those using their services.

The academic "publish or perish" scenario combined with the relative ease of website creation has inadvertently created a market ripe for the exploitation of academic authors. Some publishers are predatory on purpose, while others may make mistakes due to neglect, mismanagement, or inexperience. While the motivations and methods vary predatory publishers have common characteristics:

  • Their primary goal is to make money (i.e. there will be fees).
  • They do not care about the quality of the work published (i.e. no or little editing or peer-review).
  • They make false claims or promises (i.e. claims of impact factors and indexing).
  • They engage in unethical business practices (i.e. not as advertised).
  • They fail to follow accepted standards or best practices of scholarly publishing (various).

How does this process work?

Predatory publishers exploit a new publishing model by claiming to be legitimate open-access operation. Online predatory publishers take advantage of the Gold Open Access model. Under this model, publication charges provide publishers with income instead of subscriptions.

It's important to realize that Open Access does not make a publisher predatory, their bad behavior does.

Predatory publishers make false claims (such as quick peer-review) to lure unwary authors into submitting papers. While sending a predatory publisher a manuscript may see it "published" there is no guarantee that it underwent peer review, is included in indexes like Web of Science and Scopus, or that it will be available in a month much less in five years.

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