Library Guides: Resources for publishing: Assessing Journal Quality

Use the following websites to help select reputable scholarly journals OR to further evaluate journals for the purpose of publishing your work:

Research the Journal

Cabells
Cabells provides "Journalytics" for a curated list of over 11,000 academic journals spanning 18 disciplines, which includes metrics, editor contacts, acceptance rates, and more. Cabells also includes "Predatory Reports" --a list of journals with deceptive practices based on several criteria.
Journal Citation Reports - Web of Science/Clarivate
Journal Citation Reports (JCR) uses an algorithm based on the average number of citations/ to articles published in journals to calculate a journal's impact factor (IF).
JCR uses a core list of more than 12,000 journal titles when calculating the Impact Factors of journals.

If available, JCR also lists the Eigenfactor scores. The Eigenfactor is a way of determining a journal's importance, but this approach uses both the number of "incoming" citations to the journals as well as what is determined to be the total importance of the journal to the scientific community.
UlrichsWeb Global Serials Directory
Consult Ulrich's Periodicals Directory which can provide information about the history of a journal, publisher information, open access status, and what databases index the journal. A refereed journal will have a "refereed" icon next to the title.

Other websites to check journal quality

Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)
Are they committed to ethics in publishing as outlined by the COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics? Are they a member of COPE?
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a highly regarded, quality-controlled list of reputable open access journals. Established in 2003.

DOAJ has been criticized in the past for letting some questionable journals slip onto the list. In 2014, they undertook a significant overhaul requiring all journals to reapply for inclusion. The new criteria for inclusion are much more rigorous. If a journal is listed on here it is a very good sign that it is reputable.

**Please be aware that some disreputable journals claim to be listed in DOAJ but are not. DOAJ maintains a list of journals. Some journals say they are indexed in DOAJ but they are not.
Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA)
If it is an open access journal, is the journal a member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association OR adhere to its Code of Conduct? Membership in this association indicates a commitment to abiding by certain standards and a code of conduct. Legitimate open-access publishers are usually members of this association.
Beall's list (archived version)

Be Aware:

Many journals do not have an Impact Factor.
The Impact Factor cannot assess the quality of individual articles. Even if citations were evenly distributed among articles, the Impact Factor would only measure the interests of other researchers in an article, not its importance or usefulness.
Only research articles, technical notes, and reviews are "citable" items. Editorials, letters, news items, and meeting abstracts are not always citable.
Only a small percentage of articles are highly cited and they are found in a small subset of journals. This small proportion accounts for a large percentage of citations.
Controversial papers, such as those based on fraudulent data, may be highly cited, distorting the Impact Factor of a journal.
Citation bias may exist. For example, English language resources may be favored or authors may cite their own work.

Journal Evaluation Tool (PDF)

Journal Evaluation Tool (PDF)
A nice rubric tool to help in evaluating journals. From librarians at Loyola Marymount University.