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Finding Publishers' Open Access Policies |
Sherpa Romeo is a tool that helps you determine whether a publisher will allow you to make your publication openly available. If you signed an author's contract with a publisher you may have signed over your rights. You can check if the publisher will allow you to make a version of it available. Sherpa Romeo is an online resource that aggregates and analyses publisher open access policies from around the world and provides summaries of publisher copyright and open access archiving policies on a journal-by-journal basis.
Evaluating Journals for Quality |
It is important for scholars to determine the quality and reputation of the journals to which they submit their work for publication. Just as with subscription journals, there are unscrupulous OA publishers who spam scholars via email with tempting offers to submit journal articles and/or serve on editorial boards. Read more. Read more about how to find out if you've been contacted by a predatory publisher in this article from Nature.
OA publishing has undergone rapid growth in recent years, and in many cases OA publishers may be unfamiliar to scholars. OA journals should be judged by exactly the same criteria as any traditional publication, with a few additional considerations. Below are criteria for evaluating a specific journal, as well as links to organizations that evaluate publishers and journals.
Journal Criteria
See this checklist from Think.Check.Submit. for other factors to consider.
Appraisal by the Industry
There are many organizations that vet individual journals and publishers, which may help authors assess legitimacy.
While exclusion from any of these services does not necessarily mean that a publisher is not reputable, authors may consider:
Additionally, if it's open access:
This section was created using resources from University of California San Francisco, Florida International University and Emory University.
Resources for Vetting Journals |
Predatory or deceptive publishing are terms describing publishers or entities that exploit authors by charging publication fees (commonly known as article processing charges) yet don’t deliver on their promise of the editorial and publishing services (such as peer review) that are associated with legitimate publishers. Deceptive publishers typically prey on a researcher’s need to publish in order to get an academic appointment, gain promotion, or achieve tenure.
These publishers often engage in deceptive and unethical business practices and make false claims about a journal’s impact factor, indexing, high standards, and peer review.
Authors generally don't want to be exploited by an online scam, but it can happen if an author is:
(Adapted from Shamseer, L., Moher, D., Maduekwe, O., Turner, L., Barbour, V., Burch, R., Clark, J., Galipeau, J., Roberts, J., & Shea, B.J. (2017). Potential predatory and legitimate biomedical journals: can you tell the difference? A cross-sectional comparison. BMC Medicine 15(1) 28. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-017-0785-9.)
The following are positive indicators that a journal or publisher is not predatory:
Ask the following:
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