Selecting Journals
You can use tools to find journals in your discipline or related to your manuscript.
Manuscript matching tools:
Publisher tools:
Book publishers
What ethical commitments has the journal made?
Is the journal a member of COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) or publically committed to ethics in publishing as outlined by COPE?
*For more on journal publishing ethics view the Code of Conduct and Best Practice for Journal Editors.
What is the impact factor of a journal?
There are very different methods for comparing journals based on different metrics. Informed and careful use of these impact data is essential. Journals from different disciplines can not be compared easily.
*For more in-depth information, see ASSESSING JOURNAL QUALITY: IMPACT FACTORS (Boston College Libraries)
Other indicators of quality:
*For more on Evaluating Journal Quality Reputation view the Principles of Transparency guide from the OASPA.
The journal impact factor was originally created as a tool to help librarians identify journals to purchase, not as a measure of the scientific quality of research in an article. With that in mind, it is critical to understand that the Journal Impact Factor has a number of well-documented deficiencies as a tool for research assessment.
Drawbacks of traditional metrics
CALL FOR CHANGE
Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA)
In 2012, the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), initiated by the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) together with a group of editors and publishers of scholarly journals, recognized the need to improve the ways in which the outputs of scientific research are evaluated. They released an international declaration in 2013 calling on the world scientific community to eliminate the role of the journal impact factor in evaluating research for funding, hiring, promotion, or institutional effectiveness. To date, 904 organizations and 12,511 individuals have signed the declaration.
(From San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment Putting Science Into The Assessment of Research)
Read more about the ongoing work of DORA.
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