How to avoid predatory/blacklisted journal

how to avoid predatory/blacklisted journal

According to Grand Valley State University Libraries, indicators of predatory/blacklisted journals publishers are as follow:

Publisher “About” information is absent on the journal’s web site
Publisher direct marketing (i.e., spamming) or other advertising is obtrusive
Instructions to authors information is not available
Information on peer review and copyright is absent or unclear on the journal web site
Journal scope statement is absent or extremely vague
No information is provided about the publisher, or the information provided does not clearly indicate a relationship to a mission to disseminate research content
Repeat lead authors in same issue
Publisher has a negative reputation (e.g., documented examples in Chronicle of Higher Education, list-servs, etc.)
Journal web site is difficult to locate or identify

Tips on how to avoid predatory journals:

a) Many predatory journals are claiming they are indexed by SCOPUS & WOS/JCR with impact factors. You can check the truth by searching these resources:

i) Web of Science (WOS by Clarivate Analytics)

ii) SCOPUS (by Elsevier)

- SCOPUS Source
- SCOPUS List

iii) MyJurnal

iv) MyCite

b) Check out Open Access Journal Quality Indicators

c) Retraction Watch – A blog that reports on retractions of scientific papers

d) Tips and tools to spot predatory journal publishers

TOOLKITS

Research Visibility

SUBSCRIBED PLATFORMS

Web Of Science (WOS)
- Includes the Science Citation Index Expanded™ (SCIE), Social Sciences Citation Index™ (SSCI), Arts & Humanities Citation Index™ (AHCI), and Emerging Sources Citation Index™ (ESCI).
SCOPUS
- Content types included on Scopus are either serial publications that have an ISSN (International Standard Serial Number) such as journals, book series and some conference series, or non-serial publications that have an ISBN (International Standard Book Number) like one-off book publications or one-off conferences.
Journal Citation Report (JCR)
- How to identify Q1 & Q2 journals.

OPEN ACCESS PLATFORMS

DOAJ
- DOAJ is a unique and extensive index of diverse open access journals from around the world, driven by a growing community, committed to ensuring quality content is freely available online for everyone
ERA
- ERA is Australia’s national research assessment, administered by the ARC. It identifies and promotes excellence in research in Australia’s higher education institutions through comparisons with international benchmarks.
MyJurnal
- MyJurnal is a online system used by Citation and Infometrics Center (formely known Malaysia Citation Centre (MCC)) to collect and index all the Malaysian journals.
MyCite
- MyCite provide access to bibliographic as well full-text contents of scholarly journals published in Malaysia in the fields of Sciences, Technology, Medicine, Social Sciences and the Humanities.
USM Journal
- Penerbit USM publishes 15 refereed academic journals including 4 journals that are co-published with other publishers and associations.

SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING STRATEGY

Research Visibility

POINT 1: EVALUATION OF THE JOURNAL QUALITY

Journal Citation Reports (JCR), DOAJ, MyCIte: These platforms will help you to evaluate the quality of the journals from different perspectives such as Total Cites, Impact Factor, Quartile, Immediacy Impact, Eigen factor Score etc. From the data provided, then you may decide which journal is relevant to your needs. For instance, you may refer to the journal with high Immediacy Index (indicates how quickly articles in a journal are cited in the year of publication), in order to get an early citation.

POINT 2: SELECTING THE RELEVANT JOURNALS

Springer Journal Suggester, Elsevier Journal Finder. These platforms will suggest you about the relevant journals that you can consider to publish in, based on the manuscript of your research (usually you need to provide the title and abstract of research).

POINT 3: BE AWARE OF THE PREDATORY/BLACKLISTED JOURNALS OR PUBLISHER

Predatory or blacklisted journals is an explosive educational publishing enterprise model that involves charging publication charges to authors without checking or having checking and editorial reviewing the articles for best and legitimacy. Researchers will be misleading and tricked into publishing with them although some may be aware that the journals are poor high-quality or even fraudulent.
How to avoid predatory/blacklisted journal? Click here.

POINT 4: UNDERSTAND THE REVIEWING PROCESS

Scirev, Medsci: – These platforms help you to identify how long the editorial reviewing process takes place, acceptance ratio, rejection duration, etc.

Video Think Check Submit

Checklist Think Check Submit

MOOC@USM: Publishing Strategy

USM POLICY, GUIDELINES & SUPPORT

POLICY & GUIDELINES

USM SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING FUND

Article Processing Charge Funding For Journal Publication
Internal Grants

Bridging Grants
Short Term Research Grants
Apex Young Scholar & Apex Era
Research University Grants
Other Grants
External Grants

International
National
Industry
Product Innovation & Development Grant