Choosing a publication channel

Publication Forum is a rating and classification system of publication channels created by the Finnish scientific community to support the quality assesment of academic research. The classification includes academic journals, book series, conferences as well as book publishers. The rating is four-level. For further information, see the Publication Forum home page. 

Journal Citation Reports (JCR) database contains Journal Impact Factors (JIF), which are based on citation information from the Web of Science database. Impact Factors can be searched in JCR for an individual journal or by topic.
For further information, see the Finnish national guide to publication metrics.

DOAJ - Directory of Open Access Journals is an index containing quality open access journals. Journals which fullfil the quality criteria are accepted into the index by application.

Journal Checker Tool can be used to check whether the journal is in accordance with your funder's open acces requirements. The funders include the Academy of Finland and the European Commission. 

Journal home page contains a lot of information about the journal. Yet details like Journal Impact Factor or inclusion in DOAJ should always be verified from the original sources.

More information: bibliometriikka@oulu.fi

A number of deceptive journals have started to turn up among open access journals. The main objective of these so-called predatory journals is to collect article processing charges (APCs). These journals may promise a quick publication process, but the peer reviewers may not be experts or the peer review process may lack altogether. Also the long-term availability of articles published in these journals can be questionable.

How to recognize a predatory journal?

• Does Scopus, Web of Science or any other major citation database index the journal? What matters here is whether the journal is currently being indexed in the database.
• Is the journal listed in the DOAJ - Directory of Open Access Journals? DOAJ contains peer-reviewed high quality open acces journals which have applied for inclusion and met the criteria. Absence from the directory does not necessarily indicate that the journal is predatory.
• Is the journal classified at least as Level 1 in the Publication Forum JUFO? Journals that have been evaluated but do not meet all the Level 1 criteria are market as category 0. This group also contains journals suspected to be predatory.
• Scrutinize critically the journal home page
• Think. Check. Submit  -a checklist and a video