The rapid spread of OA has favoured the emergence of a large number of publishers ready to answer to the ever-increasing demand for publications from the scientific community. Unfortunately, not all publishers have been able to guarantee a high level of quality, creating strong reservations within the academic world. Some publishers referred to as “predatory publishers” have adopted a business model of publishing scientific articles for a fee and without providing the services and rigorous refereeing process typical of a legitimate scientific publisher. They exploit the advantages of the Open Access publishing model for financial gain by adopting deceptive and unfair marketing and engagement strategies. Hence the need for tools to be able to assess the quality of publications.
To ensure that an open access journal offers a high level of quality, it would be a good idea to check that it is included in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), a portal that indexes all open access scientific and academic journals that use a quality control system, and the publisher is a member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) and/or the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), a non-profit organisation whose aim is to define guidelines and practices regarding ethics in scientific publishing.
Compass to publish was developed by the University Library of Liège and was published online in November: it allows the authenticity of open access journals to be assessed by answering a series of questions
Other databases where it is possible to check the quality of OA journals and the peer review process are QOAM (Quality Open Access Market) and SciRev
Think Check Submit is a useful check-list to ensure you choose an accredited journal suitable for your field of research
Whyopenresearch is a site created to make researchers aware of the different ways of publishing OA and how their careers can benefit from sharing research results.
- Is the publisher easily identifiable and contactable (by email, phone and post)? Check on Google Maps where the publisher’s head office is located (sometimes addresses are used that are actually just post office (PO) boxes)
- Are the members of the journal’s editorial board known in their field of research? Is information about their academic qualifications available on the journal’s website?
- Do two or more journals have the same editorial board? Are there only two or three members? Do the members of the editorial board come from the same country or is there little diversity among them? (Especially in the case of international journals)
- Are the journal’s guidelines and editorial policies clear and transparent?
- Does the journal have an ISSN and assign a DOI to the articles it publishes?
- Is the journal known among colleagues? Have you read any articles in the journal to gauge its level?
- Are the latest articles easy to find in the archive?
- Does the name of the journal reflect its origin or is it consistent with its mission? Some titles are vague and very similar to those of other renowned journals (misleading names such as “Medical research archives” which copies the title of Elsevier’s journal “Archives of medical research”)
- Is the peer review process transparent and clearly indicated? (Short) time-scales and (high) acceptance rates for manuscripts should raise some red flags. On some sites, access to a paid “fast track” is even offered in order to “benefit” from a faster paper review (the paper is almost always accepted and published)
- Is the journal indexed in WoS, Scopus and PubMed? Some publishers use fake Impact Factors (beware of bogus journal metrics/misleading metrics)
- Does the journal have a digital preservation policy? (If not, should it cease publication, its content would no longer be available online)
- Is it clearly indicated on the site that there are/are no fees for publishing an article? Is there transparency on the fees charged?
- If a fee is charged, is the transfer of copyright to the publisher also requested? Are there cases of requesting the transfer of copyright even at the stage of submission of the paper?
- Beware of recruitment practices: emails received written in a questionable form, in an informal tone, with grammatical errors from a hardly identifiable publisher (the aim is to “flatter” the researcher to publish on unfocused topics)
- Does the publisher use excessive, annoying advertising to access the site’s content?
- Does the publisher employ insufficient resources to prevent cases of plagiarism, self-plagiarism, image manipulation?
Principles of transparency and best practice in scholarly publishing - version 3
Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open‑access publishers
Criteria for Determining Predatory OpenAccess Publishers
What are ‘predatory’ conferences and how can I avoid them?
How to avoid the risk of submitting your research article to a journal of questionable repute?
Cofactor Journal Selector Tool
Addressing Faculty Publishing Concerns with Open Access Journal Quality Indicators / Beaubien, S, Eckard, M. DOI 10.7710/2162-3309.1133. I, n Journal of
Librarianship and Scholarly Communication (2014) 2(2):eP1133, Pacific University Library
Academic Journals Plagued by Bogus Impact Factors / Mehdi Dadkhah, Glenn Borchardt, Mohammad Lagzian, Giorgio Bianciardi. DOI 10.1007/s12109-017-9509-4. In: Pub Res Q (2017) 33:183–187, Springer (full-text disponibilie nell'intranet d'ateneo)