If you are not already familiar with a journal or publisher, you should find out if the publication channel is trustworthy. This makes it easier to identify so-called predatory publishers of poor quality who are after article processing charges and often approach experts by e-mail. The names of these fraudulent publishers operating with questionable motives often mimic the names of prestigious journals and publishers.
• The contact details, editors’ names and composition of the editorial board, the publisher's information and the ISSN number are clearly advertised.
• Peer review practices are clearly stated on the publisher's website.
• The publication channel has an editorial board consisting of respected researchers.
• The publication is indexed in key citation databases of its field (including Web of Science or Scopus, which are not used by JAMK University of Applied Sciences).
• The publication has an ISSN number.
• Researchers in your field have published articles in the journal and your colleagues are familiar with it.
• The text and contents of the articles are of a high quality.
• The latest articles in the journal are easy to find
• Does the publisher belong to the Open Access Scholarly Publishers’ Association (OASPA)?
• Is an open access journal listed on the web service Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)?
Different lists of predatory journals have been published online. Beall’s list, which was the most famous one of them, has been taken down, but its archived version is still available.
For exhaustive guidelines for evaluating scientific publications, see the guide published by the University of Oulu.
Think. Check. Submit. A check list for finding a trustworthy publication.
Publication Forum
The Publication Forum is a qualitative classification of publication channels created by the Finnish scientific community based on expert panel assessments. It is used to evaluate the quality of publication channels.
• The JUFO classification covers journals, book series, conferences and publishers of books.
• Publication channels are classified as follows: 1 = basic level, 2 = leading level, 3 = highest level.
• The JUFO classification is intended for assessing the average quality of large publication volumes produced by research organisations.
• It is not meant for evaluating the quality of smaller publication volumes produced by research organisation units or individual publications, articles or monographs, nor for evaluating or comparing individual researchers.
• Guidelines have been issued for the responsible use of the JUFO classification in evaluating the quality of research. They describe the background assumptions of the JUFO classification and the limitations of the classification system as well as provide instructions for using the classification in assessing research following the principles of responsible metrics.
Instructions for using the Publication Forum 2019
• Peer reviews
Peer reviews of manuscripts produced by experts (referee practices) are usually considered to be an indication of a journal’s high quality. The purpose of peer reviews is to ensure that researchers follow the accepted practices of their field and to prevent unfounded claims and misinterpretations. A label for peer-reviewed scholarly publications is in use in Finland.
• Quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods
Different quantitative and qualitative methods are used to evaluate publication channels. Quantitative methods are based on user statistics or similar, or an impact assessment based on citation data. Qualitative methods, including the JUFO classification described above and the Journal Quality List for business journals, are based on expert evaluations.
• Impact of the publication channel
Well-known indicators of impact include the Journal Impact Factor (IF). A journal’s IF indicator is calculated by dividing the number of citations to articles published in the journal in the two years preceding the year of the calculation by the total number of articles published in the journal during this period. The calculation is based on journals listed in the Web of Science database. The IF values of journals are published annually in Journal Citation Reports (not used at Jamk). The IF value can usually also be found on the journal's home page. The higher the Impact Factor, the more citations the articles published in the journal have accumulated.
• Citation databases
Citation databases can be used to view the number of citations a journal has accumulated and, for example, determine which articles, journals or researchers have accumulated the highest number. The most important citation databases are the multidisciplinary Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus. Neither of these is available at Jamk. You can also look for citations on Google Scholar, however keeping in mind that all data producers, including Ebsco, have not given Google Scholar rights to crawl their databases, and that Google Scholar does not indicate which data sources the search covers.
The field of science that studies scientific publications, authors and citations using quantitative methods is called bibliometrics.
What does it study?
Countries, higher education institutions, research groups, fields of science, contacts between researchers, journals, citation practices. An individual researcher may also need information on the number of publications they have authored and the number of citations accumulated by their publications, for example when applying for funding.
What is it based on?
Citation numbers, different indicators (impact factor, h index), ranking lists, lists of references.
Special citation databases (Web of Science, Scopus, and Publish or Perish based on Google Scholar data) are available for this, but it is important to remember that the number of citations is not always an indication of quality.
Altmetrics studies the visibility of articles in social media and elsewhere on the web. Altmetrics follows likes and shares, including on Twitter and Facebook, as well as in blogs and researcher networks. The aim is to find out what is happening in science right now.
The following are examples of services in which you can monitor the visibility of an article:
• Altmetric
• ImpactStory
• PlumX
• PLoS One Article Level Metrics Information
Finnish studies (in which at least one of the authors is based in a Finnish university) that have attracted the most attention online are listed at FImpact web service.