Before publishing the manuscript is peer reviewed. Peer-reviewed journals are publications that include only those articles that have been reviewed and/or qualified by a selected panel of acknowledged experts in the field of study covered by the journal. In Ebsco and ProQuest databases you can limit search results to articles from peer-reviewed journals.
A good starting point for evaluating an article is the amount of citations it has received. Citations can be retrieved from the following databases:
The JUFO Portal is a service you can use to check whether a journal is scientific (peer-reviewed) or whether a book publisher is reliable.
The Publication Forum (JUFO) is a Finnish classification system that evaluates the quality of scientific publishing. The classification includes journals, book series, conferences, and book publishers. The evaluation is carried out by discipline-specific expert panels, which categorize key domestic and international publication channels into quality levels:
3 = highest level
2 = leading level
1 = basic level
0 = do not (yet) meet the criteria for level
Not evaluated = has not yet been evaluated or is professional or non-academic.
You can search the Publication Forum database without logging in.
Although the number of evaluated publications is large, the JUFO Portal does not include all journals and book publishers in the world.
In the JUFO Portal, type the journal's name into the Free text search box. If the journal is classified at level 1, 2, or 3, it is peer-reviewed.
Level 0 includes a variety of publication channels with differing levels of quality and purpose. These may include professional magazines, questionable open access journals, university publication series, and journals that have not yet been classified.
Please note that the Publication Forum classification does not cover all scientific journals worldwide. Therefore, if a journal is not listed or is placed at level 0, it does not necessarily mean the journal is of poor quality.
If the journal is not found in the JUFO portal, try the following alternatives:
A book publisher does not need to publish only scientific books to be included in the Publication Forum (JUFO) classification. Therefore, additional criteria are needed when evaluating the quality of a book.
In the JUFO portal, enter the publisher’s name in the Free text search field. If the publisher is classified at level 1, 2, or 3, it is considered reliable.
The impact of academic publications is typically measured by how much it is read, used and cited. Books can also be evaluated by author background information and prestigiousness of the publisher. Other ways of evaluating books are through book reviews and sales figures from publishers.
