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Scholarly Publishing

Tips and tools for identifying potential venues for publication, and metrics to help you demonstrate your scholarly impact.

Assessing Journal Quality - Getting Started

Review carefully the official journal website and look for the following criteria, as starting points:

  1. Determine if the journal has a peer review or referee process (e.g., double-blind review).
  2. Find the journal's acceptance rate.
  3. Find abstracting and indexing services that provide coverage for the journal (e.g., Academic Search Complete database).
No single criterion indicates whether or not a publication is reputable, but the balance of positive and negative indicators may inform the evaluation.
If further assistance is needed, please contact a librarian.

Tools to Quickly Identify Potential Journals - Getting Started

Make Your Work Open Access

Best practice: Before you submit, check that the journal supports Green OA (generally, self-archiving, where an author deposits his/her article into a research repository at no charge) or Gold OA (generally, the Open Access Publishing Model).

Where Not to Publish: Predatory (junk) Publishers

Predatory publishers are entities which produce open access journals that:

  • Prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship
  • Use false or misleading information
  • Deviate from best editorial and publication practices including rigorous peer review
  • Lack transparency
  • Use aggressive and indiscriminate solicitation practices
  • Exhibit a spectrum of behaviors that range from genuinely fraudulent with varying degrees of unacceptable practices including well-intentioned but low-quality standards
Sources: Grudniewicz A, Moher D, Cobey KD, et al. Predatory journals: no definition, no defence. Nature. 2019; 576(7786):210-212. and The InterAcademy Partnership (IAP). Combatting predatory academic journals and conferences. 2022.