LibGuides: Research Support: Scholarly publishing

Predatory Journals

What is a predatory journal?

Predatory open-access publishing is an exploitative open-access academic publishing business model that involves charging publication fees to authors without providing the editorial and publishing services associated with legitimate journals (open access or not).

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_open_access_publishing, accessed on 08/05/2018)

How to identify a predatory journal

The Department of Higher Education and Training have already compiled a list of Accredited Journals for your convenience:

http://www.

If a journal does not appear in this list, check the link below on how to identify a predatory journal:

https://thinkchecksubmit.org/

Also consider:

Invitation to publish via overly flattering e-mails
Deception/hijacking – they use the same title as a well-known existing journal
Broad journal title – includes subject fields not normally grouped together
Charge exuberant author fees – more than $5,000.
High acceptance rate – more than 50%
Rapid publication – little or no peer-review
Authors are not required to rework material – publish without changes
No ISSN or DOI (digital object identifier)
Editorial board members
- no affiliation, experience or contact detail
- Gmail or yahoo e-mail addresses (not academic)
- do these people know they are on the Board?
Fake websites
- do not exist
- poorly maintained
- spelling mistakes
- dead links
Proof of peer review
Indexed by typical databases in the field
Journal claims to have an impact factor – but no way of confirming this
Trust your professional judgment

The National Electronic Theses and Dissertation portal is accessible HERE

Grow your research identity

ResearcherID: Peovides a unique identifier for researchers to manage their publication lists, tracj citation counts, h-index and more For more information click on ResearcherID.com .

ORCiD: Is an open community-based organisation providing a registry of unique researcher identifiers and a transparent method of linking research activities and outputs to these identifiers. For more information go to Orcid.org and see a list of Organisations integrated with the orcid registry .

Our research: Is an open-source, web-based tool which helps researchers explore and share the diverse impact of all their research e.g journal articles, blog posts, datasets, and software. Read more about in on Ourresearch.org .

Your research impact

How to calculate your H-index.

An H-index measures the productivity and impact of an authors research. The index is based on the authors papers and the number of times they have been cited in other publications.

You can calculate your H-index using:

Understanding the impact factor

Choosing where to publish

Identifying a journal in which to publish can be a daunting task.

To assist you, some publishers have developed online tools to identify potential journals.Copy your title and abstract into the journal finders below to find suitable journal journal titles.

Elsevier journals
Springer journals
Wiley journal finder
JANE (Journal, author, name estimator)

For Southern journals it is worthwhile consulting the following resource

Journal publishing and practices standards (JPPS) framework

For other publishers and journals , their websites need to be consulted to find similar information. Once you have identified journals, you will need to consult the DHET list of accredited journals to make sure that the journal is on the list.

Read and publish agreement
Read and publish agreement key terms

Accredited journal list

DHET accredited journals

These are journal titles which meet specific criteria and therefore qualify for subsidisation by the Department of Higher education and Training (DHET). In order to receive a subsidy or recognition for an article or conference paper which you have written, choose a journal that appears in the list. Alphabetical integrated list of accredited journals for 2022 (including all 7 lists below)

Archive of previous years list

2021

Integrated list

Clarivate Analytics Web of Science

2020

Clarivate Analytics Web of Science (previously ISI)

2019

Thomson Reuters Core Collection (previously ISI)

2018

Thomson Reuters Core Collection (previously ISI)

2017

Thomson Reuters Core Collection (previously ISI)

2016

Thomson Reuters Core Collection (previously ISI)

2015

2014

2013

Finding open access journals

Consider publishing in open access journals

Open Access..............

Maximises the access to the research findings;
Increases research impact to a wider readership;
Expands shared knowledge across scientific field;
Make your research output more visible to researchers elsewhere and make research from elsewhere more accessible;
Universities and Research Institutions afford to subscribe to a fraction of those journals, that means that research is having only a fraction of its potential usage and impact
Increases the citation impact of the author;
Over time increases the Journal Impact Factor

What else researchers need to know about OA:

What OA journals exist in your research field? .... Open Science Directory, BioMed Central, PloS, DOAJ ...
What Institutional Repository your institution use and how researchers can benefit from it?
Publishing in subscription-based journals can limit your readership (Science Direct; Wiley Online, SpringerLink, etc.)
Publishing your pre-print article in OA repositories can enlarge your readership and citation impact
As a Researcher, you have an option to publish in Accredited Open Access Journals (AOAJSA)

Top Open Access Journals Directories and Authors websites:

Research Support: Scholarly publishing

Predatory Journals

Grow your research identity

Your research impact

Understanding the impact factor

Choosing where to publish

Accredited journal list

Finding open access journals

MUT books on scholarly publishing