We are going to looking at publishers and journals in a much more robust way than we have done before.
Previously, we have looked at publishers/journals, but it has been a little ad-hoc and was at different varying levels of detail.
We want to fix that. We want to be evidenced based, as we believe that this is the right way to do it, and also maintain a record of everything we post.
We will do this for a number of reasons:
- Depending on what we find, we may consider writing a peer reviewed paper (whether it gets published is a different matter – we can but try).
- We have plans for this web site and having this growing database of evidence will be crucial to those plans.
- One post on its own does not really say very much, but lots of posts will enable others to decide for themselves whether they should submit their research articles to the journal under examination.
What is a predatory journal?
We have previously said that we do not believe in just labeling journals as predatory, or not.
We say why in one of our blog posts, but the main reason we believe that lists of predatory journals do not serve the community is that there is no agreed definition of predatory publishing.
We agree some journals are definitely predatory and some are definitely are not but there is a huge grey area and one person might believe that a journal is predatory, but somebody else may not.
Each scholar needs to decide for themselves whether they want to submit to a particular journal, rather than simply looking it up on a list which is, at best, is just an opinion.
By providing an evidence base of journals and publishers, a scholar can make an informed decision about where to submit their research.
We also hope that it can help educate others about what to look for.