Evaluating Journals for Quality and Legitimacy

Reviewing the editorial board of a journal can help determine a journal’s quality.  Journals will usually provide the names, credentials, and affiliations of the members of their editorial board.  There is often enough information provided to locate the editor’s institutional website where their training and publications may be provided.

In order to be considered a high-quality scholarly publication a journal must be refereed or peer-reviewed.  Manuscripts submitted to these publications are reviewed and considered for publication by two or more experts (peers) in the field.  These peers, whose identities are usually withheld from the manuscript author, will either accept a manuscript for publication as is, accept it with recommendations for changes, or reject it.  Journals will usually specify their peer-review process within the editorial policy or instructions for authors section of their websites.

In many instances looking at the publisher of a particular journal can be an indicator of identifying the quality of a journal.  Journals produced or hosted by a university tend to be highly regarded, but not all are equal.  Oftentimes the reputation of university publications is reflected by the reputation of the university itself.  Highly ranked universities tend to have highly regarded publications.

Journals that are sponsored or published by well-known societies or organizations can be another marker identifying a quality publication.  Leading organizations such as the American Chemical Society (ACS), American Psychological Association (APA), American Medical Association (AMA), and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), are known for publishing journals held in high esteem.

Scholarly disciplines tend to have one or two indexes which serve as valuable tools for researching a specific subject, and articles which are widely indexed are more likely to be found by other researchers.  Many respected journals are included in multiple major journal indexes.  Ulrichsweb Global Serials Directory will list the indexing and abstracting services for many journal titles.

Example of the Abstracting & Indexing field of an Ulrich's journal result page