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Publisher's Guide – Information about publishing: Quality assessment of the publication channel

Quality assessment of the publication channels

It is important to evaluate the quality of the publication channel. ARENE ry recommends that teachers and researchers working in universities of applied sciences prefer publishing channels that follow an open publishing policy, such as the Open Access journals.

Photo of a pen and a paper with text: quality, excellent, good, average and poor.

Beware of predators and hijacked/cloned journals

Predatory publishers market their publications with attractive e-mails. The main goal of these publishers is to collect author fees. They do not take care of peer review of the articles and do not invest in editorial work. Journalists, editorial boards, and impact assessment metrics reported by the paper are often false. It is also typical for predators that their names mimic and closely resemble those of prestigious journals and publishers.

Hijacked/cloned journals refer to publications who copy a website of an existing journal with the aim of misleading researchers into submitting their articles to the copied journal instead of the original. Their aim is to collect article processing charges by utilizing the reputation of the original magazine.

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Evaluating the reliability of publishing channels

Examples of the characteristics of a reliable publishing channel:

  • Contact information has been clearly indicated.
  • The publishing channel publishes the peer evaluation criteria and process clearly on its website.
  • The publishing channel has an editorial board consisting of recognised researchers.
  • The publication is indexed in the key databases of its field and in Web of Science or Scopus databases.
  • The publication has an ISSN number.
  • Researchers from your own field have published articles in the journal.

If you are not familiar with the magazine or publisher, it is worth reading a few articles and evaluating their quality. You can also contact the authors or researchers on the editorial board of the magazine and ask about their experiences with the magazine and the publisher.

Reference: Lilja, J., Ilva, J., Pölönen, J., & Jukka, L. (2014). Miten voin arvioida avoimen julkaisun luotettavuutta? (PDF-tiedosto, in Finnish only)

JULKAISUFOORUMI JUFO

Publication forum logo.

 

Publication Forum (in Finnish often referred to as JUFO) is a rating and classification system to support the quality assessment of research output. To account for the different publication cultures characteristic of various disciplines, the classification includes academic journals, book series, conferences as well as book publishers.

 

What does the Impact Factor (IF) mean?

The Impact Factor (IF) indicates the significance of a scientific publication. It shows how many references on the average the publication has had to the articles published in it during the past two years. The Impact Factor is usually indicated on the journal website. Impact Factors can also be searched from databases, such as Journal Citation Reports (JCR).

It should be noted, however, that the impact factor of a newly established publication, even if it is a high-quality one, is at first low. In addition, high-quality national scientific publications will never receive a very high Impact Factor when published in Finnish.