For any impact factor, you should be able to verify (i.e. reproduce) it. With Google Scholar, this is possible but can be time consuming and it also requires a certain level of knowledge that many may not posses.
We are often asked if a journal is legitimate. We can’t answer every request but we can provide some advice, which is to carry out an initial check to see if the journal is a member of COPE, DOAJ, Scopus and/or Web of Science.
We were recently contacted on Twitter and asked if a particular journal was a fake journal. This was an intriguing question and one which we felt we had to answer, or least look at to see if we could offer advice.
In this article we describe the investigation that we carried out.
Predatory publishing is the practice of publishers/journals charging fees to publish scientific articles, yet not providing the services that would normally be expected of a scientific journal. This includes not having robust peer review, thus not ensuring the quality and integrity of the papers which will form part of the scientific archive.
The acronym for the International Scientific Index is ISI. Is this just a coincidence that this is the same term often used for the Web of Science’s impact factor? In this article, we explore this question.