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I constantly receive emails from editors asking me to submit papers for their journals.

However, only a handful of them originate from a trustworthy source. The vast majority are just scams — journals with no reputation at all, willing to publish an(y) article for a fee.

My biggest problem with that is that I lost one or two real good opportunities to publish because I dismissed the email, thinking it was a scam.

Is there a list that I can use to easily check the reputation of a journal, in order to avoid this to happen?

Laurel
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Bruno Saboia
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    It is approximately true that any journal that sends bulk emails soliciting papers is not one that you want to publish in. – paul garrett Nov 08 '17 at 13:49
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    Related: How to identify predatory publishers/journals?, With Beall's List gone, how can I tell if a journal is spam? – HAEM Nov 08 '17 at 13:56
  • What about http://beallslist.weebly.com/ ? Is it genuine? It says "Last Update: December 31, 2016". But I think, more than a list, you're looking for a method, such as the one linked by @HeikkiMäenpää. That's way more efficient. – Clément Nov 08 '17 at 14:22
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    Can you explain what you mean when you say you “lost one or two real good opportunities to publish because you dismissed the email, thinking it was a scam?” My view on this is that if they ask you to publish with them (unless it’s a colleague you know personally), it is a scam almost by definition, so your statement does not really compute - if you have something to publish, you ask to be published and a good journal will never have to ask authors to publish their work there. But I’m wondering if I’m too narrow-minded about such things or if maybe things work differently in other areas. – Dan Romik Nov 08 '17 at 15:11
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    @paulgarrett and Dan Romik: in 2014, I wrote an article about bitcoins. This article was accepted in a major brazilian journal of economics. Ever since, I have received a lot of emails like this. In the beginning, I read through them. But now, I just dismiss it as garbage.

    Two months ago, I received an invitation to write a chapter of an online book about cryptocurrencies. I dismissed it as scam. However, the editor of the book is trustworthy, according to my thesis advisors. Unfortunately, the deadline is very close now. Probably, I am going to miss it. That's the full story.

     – Bruno Saboia Nov 08 '17 at 15:34
  • Without considering very hot topics or a slight editorial line change I agree that journals worth to publish in do not solicit submission via email. Or it difficult to skip Nature if they want an highlight article – Alchimista Nov 08 '17 at 16:13
  • Perhaps the problem is driven by reputable journals charging $5,000/article or more when published as 'open access'. While reputable journals do provide some proofreading and typesetting services, usually the referees and editors are unpaid, or paid nominal amounts (e.g., $50). I daresay one could host all papers for a quarterly journal on a $5/month account at Amazon Lightsail or Digital Ocean. Of course, the journals are guessing how many $29 or $49 access fees they'll lose with open access, but that leaves a big potential profit gap for entrepreneurs. – Paul Nov 09 '17 at 13:21

3 Answers3

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There used to be one, called Beall's list, which listed predatory journals. The author however took it offline, apparently partly because of legal threats. If you search online you will be able to find archived copies of the list, but as far as I know these are not updated any more. You can read about it here for example.

lalo
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Pieter Naaijkens
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There are at least a couple of lists. You'd have to judge for yourself how much you trust them since apparently none of them is affiliated with a University or some other "reputable" curator:

  • List of Predatory Journals

    This is a list of possibly predatory journals. The kernel for this list was extracted from the archive of Beall’s list at web.archive.org. It will be updated as new information or suggested edits are submitted or found by the maintainers of this site.

  • BEALL'S LIST OF PREDATORY ​JOURNALS AND PUBLISHERS (Last updated December 31, 2016)

    This is a list of questionable, scholarly open-access publishers. We recommend that scholars read the available reviews, assessments and descriptions provided here, and then decide for themselves whether they want to submit articles, serve as editors or on editorial boards. In a few cases, non-open access publishers whose practices match those of predatory publishers have been added to the list as well.

The Wikipedia entry Predatory open access publishing has some good information also.

Gabriel
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While it does not specifically list journals as being predatory, "SCImago Journal Rank" is a good indicator of the reputation of a given journal. Their extensive listings can be found here:

http://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php

It is a free alternative to the older "Impact Factor" rating system. The "SJR indicator" like "Impact Factor" uses the number of citations to articles in a given journal to rank the journal's importance. The difference is that in the SJR system a more prestigious journal citing another journal carries more weight in ranking that journal. Also only more recent citations are included in the ranking system. This is similar technology to Google's "PageRank" system.

Stel
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