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Selecting Quality Journals and Conferences for Academic Scholarship

"Predatory" or "questionable" journals have been causing problems for faculty who wish to publish or present in high-quality peer-reviewed journals. This guide is meant to provide help in understanding how to evaluate the quality and intention of journals

The Evolving Academic Publishing Landscape

***  This Guide provides information for faculty from papers, presentations, articles and media to aid in understanding the continuing evolution of academic publishing. Publications faculty wish to submit their work to is no longer a matter of examining peer-reviewed print  journals. The Internet provides a platform for OA journals ("Open Access", i.e. free to all readers). Now it is crucial to understand how to evaluate both print and online journals.

***  The increasing availability of online peer-reviewed journals whose content is free to readers, is a reaction to the high cost of print publishing and subscribing, and to the OA movement. CUNY contributed to OA with its Academic Works platform: (https://academicworks.cuny.edu/ ) “CUNY Academic Works is a service of the CUNY Libraries dedicated to collecting and providing access to the research, scholarship and creative work of the City University of New York. In service to CUNY’s mission as a public university, content in Academic Works is freely available to all.”

***  Some Open Access journals have been created to address a lack of opportunities for publishing, especially for non-U.S. or European countries. But OA has also opened the door for what has been called “predatory publishing.” The term “predatory” can needlessly scare writers away who wish to publish in peer-reviewed journals. We prefer the term "questionable" to describe these less-than-genuine journals.

***  This guide provides you with various ways to think about Open Access journals and how to go about evaluating these as well as print journals, to decide whether you wish to send your manuscript to a particular journal.

 

 

Avoid Predatory Journals