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.