ii
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Contents
Introduction iv
1 The origin of untrustworthy journals 1
2 The recommended approach for evaluating a journal 2
2.1 Checking formal criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2.1.1 Access to full text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2.1.2 Article processing charges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.1.3 Description of peer-review process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.1.4 Aﬃliation of editorial-board members . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.1.5 The name of the editor-in-chief included . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.1.6 Unambiguous identiﬁcation of the publisher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.1.7 The journal provides an ISSN on its website and the ISSN is valid . . . . . . . . . 11
2.1.8 Accurate information about the journal’s citation metrics in the Journal Citation
Reports and Scopus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.1.9 Accurate information about indexation in Web of Science and Scopus . . . . . . . 17
2.1.10 Providing misleading citation metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.1.11 Assessment Table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.2 Evaluating the professional quality of a journal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.3 Learning about the journal’s operating procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3 Author mills – dubious practices with monographs 27
4 Conclusion 29
Bibliography 30
Introduction
In recent years authors of scholarly publications face the risk of publishing their work with a bogus
publisher or in an untrustworthy journal. In practice, the term “predatory” is widely used to denote
these publishers. However, with regard to the fact that such publishers do not comply with the principles
of transparency and best practices in scholarly publishing, the use of terms such as untrustworthy, bogus,
and suspicious is increasing. For that reason we use the terms untrustworthy journal and bogus publisher
in this study material.
The main aim of bogus publishers and untrustworthy journals is easy ﬁnancial gain. Therefore,
they eschew the usual peer-review process before publishing a text, they create ﬁctitious editorial boards,
imitate the names of well-established, credible journals, etc. As a result of this behaviour, the academic
community is deluged with a large amount of unveriﬁed and even distorted or false information. Now
more than ever, there is an urgent need for institutions and researchers to be informed about the vital
necessity of evaluating a publisher and journal before submitting their article. For example, already today
the Committee for Evaluation of Research Organisations and Completed Programmes has information that
in the past, even texts published by bogus publishers have been evaluated. For example, in March 2016,
the Student Chamber of the Council of Higher Education Institutions informed the Council about such a
case at a meeting with the members of the Council..
With regard to the above-mentioned facts, informing academics about how to detect untrustworthy
journals is the most eﬀective protection against publishing in such journals. Only then will awareness
spread through academia about the risks of publishing in untrustworthy journals that were created merely
for the purpose of ﬁnancial gain.
The aim of this study material is to summarize the basic facts about where untrustworthy journals
come from and possible ways for detecting them.
1 The origin of untrustworthy journals
Untrustworthy journals sponge on the otherwise noble concept of the Open Access movement, which aims
to disseminate credible specialized information freely to the research community. Open Access strives for
unrestricted access to literature, limited neither by ﬁnancial nor by technical barriers, and its aim is to
publish research results that underwent a regular peer-review process before being published.
A part of publishing in the Open Access mode is covering the costs for editing and typesetting
of the texts, fees for server operation, etc. Therefore, today authors can use two modes of Open Access
publishing for submitting their work to a scholarly journal:
Open-Access Journal
Such journals oﬀer full texts of their articles to readers on the internet free of charge while the costs for
publication of the article are covered either by the author (so-called Article Processing Charges or APCs),
or by the institution which publishes the respective journal (for example Central European Journal of
Nursing and Midwifery published by the University of Ostrava).
Hybrid Open-Access Journal
In these journals, access to the journal’s content is not free of charge by default, but authors have the
possibility to publish their article in the Open Access mode if they pay a fee for it.
The Emergence of Untrustworthy Journals
Untrustworthy journals emerged with the aim to exploit the Open Access mode. While proper journals
in the OA mode observe the common practices of scholarly publishing (peer-review, specialists in their
international editorial board, etc.), untrustworthy journals not only violate these practices, but they also
often try to trick potential authors into publishing their articles with them (e.g. they create ﬁctitious
editorial boards, imitate titles of prestigious journals, perform a speedy review process, etc.). The sole
aim of all these practices is to make authors publish in their journal in order to collect a fee from these
authors.
The year 2008 brought the ﬁrst mention of untrustworthy journals, although they were not yet
termed untrustworthy. At that time, the person who drew attention to them was Tim Hill, the owner
of the New Zealand publishing house Dove Medical Press publishing in the Open Access mode. In
2010, Jeﬀrey Beall, a librarian from the American University of Colorado Denver, published on his
(now-defunct) blog Scholarly Open Access a list of bogus journals’ publishers and a list of untrustworthy
journals, the so-called Beall’s list. Two years later, he proposed criteria by which untrustworthy publishers
could be identiﬁed. Beall updated these criteria and lists until mid-January 2017 when he cancelled the
blog (therefore only a link to its archived version is provided).
Although Beall’s List gained popularity in the academic community because of the possibility
of determining quickly and easily whether a journal is listed there or not, its main ﬂaw was a lack of
transparency. Jeﬀrey Beall deﬁned 55 criteria of untrustworthy journals, but many of these criteria proved
to be controversial, because they are either diﬃcult to verify or their evaluation is subjective.
The method for journal evaluation that we have provided since 2017 to scholars and PhD students
at the University Campus Bohunice has repeatedly undergone critical discussion, which resulted in its
current 10 objectively veriﬁable criteria. In the following parts of this study material, we present these
10 criteria in context with the respective criteria from Beall’s list. In this way we want to help you
understand that journal evaluation is not just black and white, and a complex approach is necessary.
2 The recommended approach for evaluating
a journal
If you want to eliminate the risk of publishing in an untrustworthy journal, it is indispensable that you
perform these three steps:
1. Check objectively veriﬁable formal criteria of transparency principles and ethics of scholarly publishing.
This step includes checking 10 criteria which are described in detail in the following sections.
We recommend recording the resulting number of points for each criterion on an evaluation chart.
2. Perform a content analysis of the journal, i.e. read a couple of the journal’s volumes and, based on
your own expert knowledge or with the help of check lists (see section 2.2)), evaluate the professional
quality of the published articles.
3. Search on the internet. There are various websites where scholars share experience with publishing.
In this way you can gain insight into the quality of the respective journal’s editorial work (see
section 2.3)). As a part of this evaluation step you should also familiarize yourself with how the
databases Web of Science, JCR, and Scopus evaluate the journal.
The following sections describe the individual, above-mentioned steps of the approach for a detailed
evaluation of a journal.
2.1 Checking formal criteria
In the ﬁrst step, you should check ten criteria which can be objectively veriﬁed and are based on transparency
principles and ethics of scholarly publishing determined by authorities in publication ethics,
namely COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics), DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals), OASPA
(Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association) and WAME (World Association Medical Editors). When
evaluating a journal, we recommend using an evaluating chart either in its online version or as an Excel
ﬁle.
In the following subchapters, it is explained why the respective criteria should be evaluated and
how to proceed. We have also included examples of journals that violate the respective criterion. When
evaluating these criteria with the help of the evaluation chart, you should proceed as follows. Start by
verifying on the journal’s website whether a criterion is met or not (e.g. you can verify the presence of an
ISSN by looking at the main page of the website or subpages thereof with information about the journal).
When the criterion is met, the journal gains 1 point, while when the criterion is not met (even partly)
the journal gains 0 points. A journal with 10 points can be considered fully transparent.
However, in real life scholars often learn that some of the criteria are occasionally violated even
by well-established journals. This is why the journal evaluation approach recommended in this study
material includes two more evaluation steps: an assessment of the professional quality of the journal
and an eﬀort to ﬁnd information about the journal’s operation and how it solves possible violations of
publication ethics.
2.1.1 Access to full text
The ﬁrst criterion to check is the free access to full texts as the primary goal of Open Access journals.
When validating this criterion you should focus on whether a journal in Open Access mode really provides
access to the full texts of its articles. Keep in mind that a number of journals provided access to their
full texts on the basis of subscription in the past, and only later did they adopt the Open Access mode.
Therefore, it is advisable to focus on availability of full texts in the current issue or volume.
Although evaluating this criterion may seem straightforward, unfortunately cases may appear when
you hesitate whether you should deem it fulﬁlled or not. For example, in the journal JSM Bioavailability
and Bioequivalence, this criterion will be clearly evaluated as unfulﬁlled because, after selecting the
current issue in the menu on journal’s website, the homepage “About the Journal” loads again instead
of the page with articles for download.
2.1 Checking formal criteria 3
However, the evaluation of the journal Noise &amp; Health may be controversial, because it
provides access to its articles in HTML format for free while for a PDF version of articles it charges
20 USD. One person may consider the availability of full text in HTML format to represent a fulﬁlled
criterion while another person might assess the criterion more strictly and expect completely free access
to the full text regardless of its format in the open-access mode.
2.1 Checking formal criteria 4
2.1.2 Article processing charges
In the context of article processing charges (APCs), untrustworthy journals are connected with practices
such as non-transparent information about APCs or providing information about them only after the fact
(a surprise in the form of unexpected invoices). The amount of APCs may also be very low and therefore
cannot cover the costs for publishing an article.
Although it was found that the average cost imposed by western publishers to publish an article is
approximately 500 EUR, it cannot be considered a universal guideline which distinguishes untrustworthy
journals from the others, because the economies of various countries diﬀer. The amount of APCs as a
criterion is disputable for one more reason: today there are many untrustworthy journals that require an
APC amount similar to that of traditional publishers (see below the example Journal of Immunobiology
Ö Immunobiology).
While the diﬀerence in the amount of APCs in Journal of Immunobiology and Immunobiology is only
531 USD, the ﬁrst journal is published by the publisher OMICS that was sentenced to pay a ﬁne of 50
million USD for unfair publication practices.
When assessing the APC criterion you should determine whether the journal states the exact
amount of APCs clearly and intelligibly. It is typical of untrustworthy journals that they provide the
amount of APCs together with some note – usually on the same page – in which the publisher reserves
the right to charge additional fees.
As an example the publishing house Allied Academies may serve (see below). Publishing an article
here requires not only paying APCs but also for membership in an unspeciﬁed organization with a yearly
fee of 75 USD.
2.1 Checking formal criteria 5
2.1.3 Description of peer-review process
Although it is commonly stated that untrustworthy journals usually have a very short peer-review process
(a matter of days), in reality this criterion is questionable as well. On one hand, writing a review may take
only a few hours, but on the other hand, the total length of the peer-review process may be inﬂuenced
by searching for a suitable reviewer or by the reviewers being busy. For example, it follows from the
e-mail below that if the editor of the journal had not been on holiday, the review process could have been
shorter by a whole month.
When evaluating this criterion, you should ﬁnd out whether a sample of the peer-review process
is provided on the journal’s website, so that you have a precise idea about its course. This means ﬁnding
a page on the journal’s website with information for authors or with the journal’s ethical principles, and
there you should look to see whether the journal describes the course of peer review in detail. There are
three types of peer-review process:
Double blind
The text is evaluated by at least two reviewers while neither the
reviewers nor the author(s) know each other’s identity. This is
the most common type of review process.
Single blind
The text is evaluated by at least two reviewers who know the
identity of the author(s) and whose identity is hidden from the
author(s).
Open
The text is evaluated by at least two reviewers, both the reviewers
and author(s) know each other’s identity.
The editorial board is one of the key parts of a journal. It is a decision-making body determining
both the content and thematic focus of the journal. It also develops strategies and visions which the
journal follows in its publishing. The editorial board’s prestige reﬂects the quality of the whole periodical.
In the context of untrustworthy journals, the editorial board is connected with the criteria mentioned
below, though these criteria are generally problematic.
2.1 Checking formal criteria 6
In this example from the journal Nature, a short sample from a comprehensive description of the
peer-review process in the instructions for authors is provided.
More commonly, you will ﬁnd a briefer yet suﬃcient description, which includes the most important
information, i.e. the fact that the article undergoes a peer-review process and what type of review process
it is (here double blind).
2.1 Checking formal criteria 7
By contrast the journal Current Issues in Molecular Biology does not provide any information about the
course of the peer-review process. This example also demonstrates that you cannot rely on the fact that
databases such as Scopus and JCR list only reliable journals because this journal has an impact factor
assigned in Journal Citation Reports, though it clearly lacks a description of the peer-review process.
2.1.4 Aﬃliation of editorial-board members
The editorial board is one of the key parts of a journal, it is a decision-making body with respect to
the content and thematic focus of the journal. It also develops strategies and visions which the journal
follows in its publishing. The editorial board’s prestige reﬂects the quality of the whole periodical. In
the context of untrustworthy journals, editorial board is connected with the below-mentioned criteria;
however, they are mostly problematic.
2.1 Checking formal criteria 8
Criteria Questionability of criteria
The same editorial board for a whole portfolio
of journals
As there are several thousand journals, it is practically
impossible to ascertain whether one editorial
board is connected with multiple journals.
Fictitious members of editorial boards This criterion can only be veriﬁed by searching for
the board members on the websites of their institutions.
Besides the time-consuming nature of verifying
this criterion, especially when the editorial board
has many members, not all institutions provide information
about their employees or students due to
personal data protection.
Well-known and successful researchers are included
among the editorial-board members
without their knowledge.
Not all scholars provide information about their
membership on the website of their institution. Reasons
for this may vary (e.g. the design of their institution’s
website does not allow it, lack of interest on
the side of the author, no obligation to provide such
information, etc.). Therefore, this criterion can only
be veriﬁed by contacting the scholar directly. The
question remains to what extent are scholars willing
to reply to questions regarding their membership on
editorial boards.
The editorial board has only a few members or
it is not international and its members come
mainly from developing countries
In terms of the number of editorial-board members,
authorities such as COPE, DOAJ, OASPA and
WAME do not set out any standard for whether this
criterion is violated or fulﬁlled.
Even the prevalence of people from developing countries
on the editorial board and the implied lower
quality of editorial work is controversial. Under globalization,
an increasing number of representatives
from third countries on editorial boards is a natural
development. In particular, there are many regional
journals whose editorial-board members are mostly
from the respective region, yet such journals are not
lacking in professional quality.
Aﬃliation of the editorial-board members is
not accurate
This is the only criterion associated with the editorial
board which we recommend checking, although
we are aware that even this criterion may be problematic.
As follows from the sample below, even such
a prestigious journal as CA: A Cancer Journal for
Clinicians with the highest impact factor (223.679 v
r. 2018) does not provide the full aﬃliation (i.e. institution
and state/city) of its editorial-board members
but only their institutions. In the case of strict
control, this would mean that in terms of formal criteria,
this journal would be evaluated as untrustworthy.
Nevertheless, we recommend checking this criterion,
because only with full aﬃliation can an author
or reader identify an editorial-board member unimpeachably.
At the same time, this is also a criterion
set by the COPE, DOAJ, OASPA and WAME au-
thorities.
2.1 Checking formal criteria 9
2.1 Checking formal criteria 10
2.1.5 The name of the editor-in-chief included
Following the preceding criterion, you should also check whether the journal provides clear information
about its editor-in-chief either on its website or in the journal itself. Like in any other normally operating
organization, journals must have a person responsible for certain processes. Whether an article is accepted
or declined is decided by the editor-in-chief of the journal.
On the website of the journal Parkinson’s Disease, only information about the editorial board is available,
but no mention of the editor-in-chief can be found.
2.1 Checking formal criteria 11
2.1.6 Unambiguous identiﬁcation of the publisher
A common practice of untrustworthy journals is that instead of providing unambiguous information
about their publisher, they either do not mention the publisher at all or they replace it with the name
of the journal. Being able to unambiguously identify the publisher is vital because it helps the reader
or potential author learn who owns the journal. In this way authors immediately get an idea about the
expected quality of the editorial work, especially when the owner is a traditional publishing house such
as Elsevier, Springer, etc.
When verifying this criterion, the publisher can commonly be found in the footer of the website
with information about copyright. In the example below, the website footer of the journal Medicine
includes a statement that the publisher is Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. The name of the publisher serves
also as a link to its website.
By contrast, the website of the journal Neuropsychiatry mentions in the footer only the name of
the journal and next to it an address without any addressee.
2.1.7 The journal provides an ISSN on its website and the ISSN is valid
The ISSN (International Standard Serial Number) provides important information about a journal, because
it is an unambiguous identiﬁer which prevents readers as well as potential authors from confusing
journals with similar titles. When verifying this criterion, ﬁrst the ISSN of the journal must be found
and then checked on the ISSN Portal (https://portal.issn.org/). One should verify whether the journal
can be retrieved on this portal according to its ISSN and whether the information recorded in the ISSN
corresponds to that included on the website of the journal (e.g. information about the publisher, the
frequency of the journal’s publication, etc.).
When trying to ﬁnd the ISSN, you need to inspect the website of the journal very thoroughly,
because it may not be easy to ﬁnd at ﬁrst sight.
You can see this in the following examples. While the journal World Psychiatry provides its ISSN
right in the heading of its website. . .
2.1 Checking formal criteria 12
. . . the journal Nature placed this information just above the footer of its website and only in
small print.
Sometimes ﬁnding the ISSN may be complicated. For example, the journal Cell does not provide
its ISSN either on its homepage, or on any subpages in the About section, where the reader would
commonly expect such information, but instead only on the page with information about subscriptions.
2.1 Checking formal criteria 13
2.1.8 Accurate information about the journal’s citation metrics in the Journal
Citation Reports and Scopus
One of the most distinctive features of untrustworthy journals is an eﬀort to deliberately confuse authors
by falsely proclaiming metrics that have allegedly been assigned to the journal in the databases Journal
Citation Reports (JCR) and Scopus. While the JCR database calculates the impact factor for journals
indexed there, Scopus calculates three metrics for their journals – CiteScore, SNIP and SJR (we discuss
metrics in a separate study material).
Untrustworthy journals present on their websites the value of certain metrics, the names of which
are similar to the above-mentioned metrics (e.g. Global Impact Factor, Journal Impact Factor). The aim
is to lure authors into publishing their articles in an untrustworthy journal and collect article processing
charges. With regard to evaluation of scholarly achievements and the author’s prestige, publishing in a
journal with impact factor in particular is a great motivation. Therefore, untrustworthy journals take
advantage of this and try to mislead authors by providing metrics with names similar to the metrics
provided by JCR and Scopus on their websites.
In this case verifying this criterion is very easy, because any time you encounter a journal providing
metrics of a similar name like impact factor, CiteScore, SNIP and SJR, just search for the journal in
JCR or Scopus and check whether the journal is listed there and has a current value of the respective
metrics. Here you need to remember that the values of the metrics are published with a certain delay.
For example, impact factor is commonly published in June or July. Therefore, the most recent value in
the ﬁrst half of 2020 will be for the year 2018, and in the second half for 2019.
Journals commonly provide citation metrics on their website or in the section about indexation in
databases. In the below-mentioned example with the journal China-USA Business Review, the metrics
are provided in the section Indexing. In this case the metric’s name JIFACTOR may indicate either
an eﬀort to mislead authors by deliberately providing metrics with a name similar to the oﬃcial one or
providing false metrics (for more information about false metrics, see below).
2.1 Checking formal criteria 14
Because the text with the name of the metrics is not a link to a website with more information,
we need to make sure whether the journal is listed in JCR and whether these metrics are genuine. From
the ﬁgure below, it is obvious that the journal is not indexed in JCR and therefore did not meet the
criterion, because it is either lying about being indexed in JCR or provides false information about the
metrics.
2.1 Checking formal criteria 15
Another example of a journal falsely claiming to have citation metrics is the Indian Journal of
Advanced Nursing, which declares that it has an impact factor of 2.002 (this is a moving bar where also
IBI Factor is provided – see below the section about untrustworthy metrics).
When trying to verify the value of these metrics in JCR, we learnt that this journal is not indexed
in this database.
2.1 Checking formal criteria 16
A diﬀerent situation is shown in the example of the journal Vitamins & Minerals with the metric
Journal Impact Factor. This may either be an attempt to imitate the name of the real impact factor
from JCR with the aim to confuse authors or providing a misleading metric.
Contrary to the preceding example, here the name of the metric is a link to a website (see below)
with a description of its calculation method. Although the calculation itself does not diﬀer from the
real impact factor, the basis for calculating this metric are citations from Google Scholar Citation Index
database according to the information provided (see below). The journal violated the criterion Accurate
information about citation metrics in Journal Citation Reports and Scopus by the fact that it used the
oﬃcial name of the real impact factor for its own metric, namely Journal Impact Factor. At the same
time, the journal also did not comply with the criterion Providing misleading citation metrics because
basing a metric on a system that uses even citations from presentations is questionable.
2.1 Checking formal criteria 17
2.1.9 Accurate information about indexation in Web of Science and Scopus
Authors are motivated to publish in journals indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus because
their evaluation is based on that. However, one should always check whether a claim about being indexed
in one of these databases is true (medical professionals may also consider MEDLINE PubMed).
A journal’s claim about being indexed in WoS or Scopus can be veriﬁed either in the database
directly or according to the content of both databases available publicly. In the case of WoS, you can use
the online search engine Master Journal List. The list of Scopus indexed journals can be downloaded on
the website Elsevier in the section Solutions > Scopus > How Scopus works > Content coverage > Titles
on Scopus, na kter´ych by je uˇzivatel oˇcek´aval, ale pouze na str´ance s informacemi pro pˇredplatn´e.
The necessity to carefully check information on journals’ websites is shown on the example of
American Journal of Analytical Chemistry, which gives Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics) at the ﬁrst
place in the section Indexation. This is complemented with data about citation rates and a link to a
preview from WoS documenting this indexation.
This text may give you the impression that the journal is indexed in Web of Science, although this
is not the case (see below the preview from WoS). In reality, this preview from WoS only proves that the
Journal of Analytical Chemistry was cited by other journals in WoS.
2.1 Checking formal criteria 18
2.1.10 Providing misleading citation metrics
Untrustworthy journals try to gain the appearance of being prestigious by providing various citation
metrics which have nothing in common with impact factor, CiteScore, SNIP and SJR from JCR and
Scopus. Most frequent are metrics combining an adjective with the term impact factor (e.g. Global
Impact Factor, General Impact Factor, IBI Factor etc.). The problem of these metrics is their lack of
transparency. Their method of evaluation is either not published or is based – even partially – on a
subjective evaluation of journals.
This means that if you encounter a diﬀerent metric than impact factor, CiteScore, SNIP and SJR
from JCR and Scopus, you should try to learn more about the metric. In the chapter about citation
metrics in JCR and Scopus the journal Vitamins & Minerals with the metric Journal Impact Factor
served as an example. We also explained the method by which it is calculated, which includes citation
data from Google Scholar Citations. With regard to the fact that Google Scholar Citations does not
distinguish whether an article is cited by properly published texts or by various other documents such as
presentations, drafts, etc., the data about citation rates can be considered questionable and as a result
the entire metric is irrelevant.
Another example of a misleading citation metrics is IBI factor provided by the Indian Journal of
Advanced Nursing on its website which was mentioned in the part about citation metrics in JCR and
Scopus.
After searching on the internet the method of calculating IBI factor can be found (see a sample
below). However, we ﬁnd this metric controversial.
2.1 Checking formal criteria 19
The method of calculating IBI factor is as follows: ﬁrst the journal is awarded points for criteria
divided into sections A to E. Then the resulting IBI Factor is calculated according to the equation:
A + B + C + D + E
10
IBI Factor can be considered a misleading metric for several reasons:
 One question is whether it is possible to evaluate almost 5,000 journals on a yearly basis in the way
described above, especially due to personal issues.
 The metric is not transparent. For example, already in the ﬁrst section A, it is not clear why the
sum of journals should be multiplied by 10 and why the number of this year’s articles should be
divided by the number of articles published the last year. In the other sections, it is not clear
whether a journal receives 10 points only if it complies with all criteria, or if the points in the given
section are divided by the number of criteria and journals then receive the respective number of
points for the given criterion (e.g. if a journal complies with only one criterion out of four in the
section B, does it receive 0 points or 2.5 points?).
 The criteria are controversial. For example, because there is no law or norm ordering that a journal
should be a weekly, monthly, or yearly periodical, the criterion in section B evaluating the number
of issues published last year is irrelevant. Similarly, journals are not obliged to have a website,
therefore the criteria 2, 3, 5, 6, and 8 are also irrelevant.
In this way other criteria in the following sections could also be proven wrong or useless. Nevertheless,
for the purpose of this material, the notes provided above suﬃce to demonstrate that it is vital
to check metrics other than those from JCR and Scopus thoroughly.
2.1 Checking formal criteria 20
2.1.11 Assessment Table
# Criterion
name
Method of criterion ver-
iﬁcation
Parameters for criterion Score Points
1 Unambiguous
determination
of article
processing
charges
Does the journal website
give the exact amount of
article processing charges?
The journal states that it
does not collect any article
processing charges.
1
Yes, the journal gives a speciﬁc
ﬁnal amount of the
charges.
1
The amount of charges is unclear
(for example, the journal
states the price per article,
adding that any additional
pages will be subject to
extra charge without specifying
the charge).
0
The journal does not state the
amount of article processing
charges.
0
2 Aﬃliations of
editorial board
members
Does the journal website
include complete
aﬃliations for all editorial
board members, i.e. the
name of the institution
and the city/country?
The aﬃliation is complete
and includes the institution
and the city/country.
1
The aﬃliation is incomplete,
with either the name
of the institution or the
city/country missing.
0
No aﬃliation is given. 0
3 Description of
the review
process
Does the journal website
include a detailed
description of the review
process – whether it is a
double-blind peer review
or open peer review and
how many reviewers
assess the articles?
Yes, a description of the review
process is included.
1
The website only says “peerreviewed”
without giving further
information about the
process.
0
No, a description of the review
process is not included.
0
4 Free and open
access to full
text
Does the journal website
allow users to freely
download or view full-text
articles from the current
volume?
Yes, articles can be freely
downloaded or viewed.
1
No, some or all of the articles
cannot be downloaded or
viewed.
0
2.1 Checking formal criteria 21
# Criterion
name
Method of criterion ver-
iﬁcation
Parameters for criterion Score Points
5 Name of the
editor-in-chief is
included
Does the journal website
give the name of the
editor-in-chief?
Yes, it does. 1
No, it does not. 0
6 Unambiguous
identiﬁcation of
the publisher
Does the journal website
clearly identify the
publisher (usually in the
website footer in the
copyright information),
rather than just giving
the title of the journal?
Yes, it does. 1
No, it does not. 0
7 Journal states
its ISSN on its
website and the
ISSN is valid
Does the journal or
publisher website include
the journal’s ISSN
(International Standard
Serial Number) and is the
ISSN veriﬁable via
https://portal.issn.org/?
Yes, it is stated on the journal’s
website and it is veriﬁable
via ISSN Portal.
1
Yes, it is stated on the journal’s
website, but it is not veriﬁable
via ISSN Portal
0
No, it does not. 0
8 Accurate
information
about the
journal’s
citation metrics
in Journal
Citation
Reports and
Scopus
If the journal website
gives information about
any of the citation metrics
in JCR or in Scopus, this
information is veriﬁed in
the databases to see
whether the journal gives
the most up-to-date
information.
The journal does not give any
citation metrics.
1
The metrics given by the
journal are the most up-todate
ones in JCR/Scopus.
1
The journal gives metrics
from both databases, but
some of them are not the
most up-to-date ones in one
of the databases.
0
The journal gives metrics
from both databases, but
none of them is the most
up-to-date in either of the
databases.
0
The journal only gives metrics
from one database, but
none of them is the most upto-date
one.
0
2.2 Evaluating the professional quality of a journal 22
# Criterion
name
Method of criterion ver-
iﬁcation
Parameters for criterion Score Points
9 Accurate
information
about the
journal’s
indexing in Web
of Science and
Scopus
If the journal website
gives information about
indexing in Web of
Science or Scopus, this
information is veriﬁed in
the databases to see
whether they include the
current or previous
volume of the journal.
The journal does not give any
information about indexing.
1
The journal gives accurate information
about indexing in
both databases.
1
The journal gives information
about indexing in one of the
databases and the information
is accurate.
1
The journal gives information
about indexing in both
databases, but the information
is false in the case of one
of the databases.
0
The journal gives information
about indexing in one of the
databases and the information
is false.
0
10 Referring to a
questionable
citation metric
or database
Does the journal website
include information about
any questionable citation
metrics or databases?
The journal website does not
refer to any questionable metric
or database.
1
The journal website refers
to a questionable metric or
database.
0
Number of points needed to meet all evaluation criteria 10
Total number of points
2.2 Evaluating the professional quality of a journal
The second step during journal evaluation must be an analysis of the journal’s content, one focused
mainly on its professional quality rather than on bad grammar or spelling as commonly associated with
untrustworthy journals. Many authors have published in untrustworthy journals because they did not
assess its professional quality, despite the fact that they can use one of the following tools for examining
the quality of text processing besides their professional knowledge.
For example, the Joanna Briggs Institute created critical appraisal tools for various types of studies
with questions checking comprehensibility, attention to detail, objectivity, and veriﬁability of the research
results. Each of these questions is also complemented with an explanation of what speciﬁcally the question
is aiming at in the article.
2.2 Evaluating the professional quality of a journal 23
Sample of critical appraisal checklist for case reports from the Joanna Briggs Institute
Similar aid is provided by checklists from the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme containing
questions about the clarity of aims and results of the research, the suitability of the chosen research
method and the gathering of results, as well as compliance with ethical principles of research. These
checklists help authors to assess the quality of the content of randomly chosen articles not only based
on their specialization but also with the help of a standardized method. In this way authors can get an
idea about the quality of editorial work and the journal’s requirements for the professional quality of the
published articles.
2.3 Learning about the journal’s operating procedures 24
Sample from the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme case studies checklist
2.3 Learning about the journal’s operating procedures
The third step when evaluating a journal is to try learning about the way the journal operates. In the
case of journals with open peer review, it is necessary to read some peer reviews and the communication
between the reviewers and the editor, as this provides the most accurate information about the review
process and the editor’s reasons for accepting an article.
2.3 Learning about the journal’s operating procedures 25
The publishing house BioMed Central opted for an open peer review in many of its journals; reviews
together with the authors’ reaction to them are publicly available. In this way, a reader can gain a precise
idea about the course and quality of the review process and also about the journal or publisher’s interest
to publish only works of quality.
Since such open peer review is rarely employed by journals, we depend on information from secondary
sources in this step. These sources may include platforms such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu,
Retractionwatch.com, and Retractiondatabase.org, where researchers share their experience with publishing.
Naturally, the information obtained on these platforms needs to be assessed critically. For example,
one cannot conclude that the journal as a whole or its publisher are untrustworthy after seeing one article
with forged or otherwise manipulated results. Instead, one should check whether, for example, the
editorial board of the journal properly retracted the article afterwards. Or in the case that one uses
platforms such as ResearchGate, one must pay attention to whether the discussants support their claims
with evidence.
Indexation of a journal in Journal Citation Reports (JCR) and Scopus may also indicate how
reliable the journal is. This is because if a journal fails to meet JCR’s and Scopus’s evaluation criteria or
exhibits non-standard citation practices, the journal is excluded from their interface accessible to users.
Therefore, users should be interested in the reasons why the indexation of a journal was interrupted
or terminated. JCR provides these reasons in a brief form in its title suppression list and Scopus in
its discontinued titles list. If necessary, one can try to reconstruct their evaluation approach. When
evaluating a journal indexed in JCR, one needs to focus on possible non-standard citation practices of
the journal (a signiﬁcant increase or fall in the number of citations, self-citations, and articles, majority of
citations from a small group of journals) as well as on compliance with 28 criteria from JCR. In a journal
indexed in Scopus, the following data are checked within the journal’s ﬁeld: the self-citation rate, the
total citation rate, CiteScore citation metrics, number of articles, number of full-text clicks and abstract
usage.
2.3 Learning about the journal’s operating procedures 26
For example, in JCR’s title suppression list from 2019, the International Journal of Civic Engineering
is listed with the note “Self”, which indicates that the value of its impact factor is inﬂuenced by
a high number of self-citations.
If you look at the speciﬁc data about this journal in JCR, you will learn that while its impact
factor value ranges from 0.372 to 0.695 (average 0.497), its impact factor value without self-citation varies
between 0.150 and 0.382 (with an average of 0.254). With regard to the method of calculating the impact
factor, this means that approximately half of the citations of articles published in the International
Journal of Civil Engineering were self-citations. The administrators of JCR considered such a high
number of self-citations too signiﬁcant an inﬂuence on the impact factor and therefore excluded the
journal from their list.
On the other hand, Scopus has the criterion “Number of articles”. Here it checks whether a journal
published half the number of articles or less than other journals from the same ﬁeld. However, it does not
provide reasons for why the bar was set to half and not a diﬀerent percentage. Moreover, this criterion
ignores the fact that due to the varying publication schedules of journals, the number of articles published
may diﬀer as well.
3 Author mills – dubious practices with mono-
graphs
Unfair publishing practices have aﬀected even the ﬁeld of monograph publication. A typical example is the
so-called author mill or academic author mill. This term refers to publishers’ practices where the business
model consists of producing a large number of titles in very small editions – the very opposite of wellestablished
publishing houses which focus on a limited number of good-quality authors and publish their
works in thousands of copies. The target group of these publishers are usually postdoctoral researchers
whom such publishers actively try to persuade to publish their doctoral theses with them.
Recognizing bogus publishers is more diﬃcult compared to identiﬁcation of untrustworthy journals,
because publishers of books do not commonly provide detailed information on their websites regarding
the description of the review process, editorial board, etc. Therefore, one should pay attention to various
details and, above all, consult one’s colleagues for what experiences they might have had with the publisher
(e.g. whether there was a review process, what care was devoted to ﬁnal language editing, etc.).
The publisher Lambert Academic Publishing (LAP) sent to Jiˇr´ı Kratochv´ıl, one of the authors of this
material, an oﬀer to publish his PhD thesis as a book. The suspicion that LAP is a bogus publisher arises
based on two factors. Firstly, the e-mail was sent in December 2010, yet Jiˇr´ı Kratochv´ıl did not ﬁnish
his PhD thesis and defend it until May 2013. Secondly, LAP state in the e-mail that they received a
reference to Jiˇr´ı Kratochv´ıl in the ﬁeld of medicine, when in fact Jiˇr´ı Kratochv´ıl was studying humanities
Author mills – dubious practices with monographs 28
If you look at the website of LAP, under the link “Why choose us?” you can ﬁnd – among other things –
the information about the review process shown above. Of course every author can decide for themselves
whether publishing a book, especially a scholarly one, without any review represents a real contribution
to science. In any case, LAP’s justiﬁcation for publishing PhD theses (or other graduate theses) without
any peer-review process on the basis that the thesis underwent a similar process at the PhD student’s
university, is controversial. This approach completely ignores the fact that even when the defence is
successful, theses are of varying quality.
4 Conclusion
As it follows from this material, today it is an absolute must to carefully evaluate the quality of publications
by the respective publisher. The ability to identify untrustworthy journals is becoming a natural
part of the publication process. Before authors submit their article, they should always consider whether
the publisher and its work display characteristics of untrustworthy publishing. When selecting a journal,
authors must pay attention to whether all crucial information is provided and in a transparent way (e.g.
contact details, clearly set ﬁnancial policy of the publisher, veriﬁability of the professional qualiﬁcation
of editorial-board members, clearly set course of peer-review process, provision of only relevant citation
metrics, etc.). Moreover, one cannot rely only on checking the formal criteria of a journal, rather one
must also focus on its professional quality as well as the way the journal operates.
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