LUT guide to publishing: Selection and Evaluation of a Publication Channel

When choosing the publishing channel, please note

• publishing tradition
• scientific level of the channel
• possibility for open access publishing, either selecting an open access channel or by parallel publishing using a repository like LUTPub
  • please note the funder's requirements for open access publishing and the open science and research policy for LUT universities, including the publication fee requirements
• beware of predatory publishers!

Publication Forum

Publication Forum is a classification of publication channels created by the Finnish scientific community to support the quality assessment of academic research.

Publication Forum (in Finnish often referred to as JUFO) is a rating and classification system to support the quality assessment of research output. To account for the different publication cultures characteristic of various disciplines, the classification includes academic journals, book series, conferences as well as book publishers. The four-level classification rates the major foreign and domestic publication channels of all disciplines as follows:

1 = basic level
2 = leading level
3 = highest level
0 = publication channels that don’t meet the criteria for level 1.

The evaluation is performed by 23 discipline-specific Expert Panels composed of some 250 distinguished Finnish or Finland-based scholars.

Search Jufo portal >

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Journal Citation Reports (JCR)

Journal Citation Reports (JCR) is a tool for evaluating scientific journals based on the database of Web of Science (WoS). Web of Science database includes articles, conference proceedings, patents and books on multiple fields of science. JCR brings together the citation information from WoS and JCR database can be used to find both subject category and journal specific indicators.

Eigenfactor

The Eigenfactor project evaluates journals of science and social science using two indicators the Eigenfactor Score and the Article Influence Score, which are based on PageRank algorithm. The citation data is from Journal Citation Reports (JCR). 

Scimago Journal Rank

Scimago Journal Rank is a portal that includes the journals and country-specific indicators developed from the information contained in the Scopus® database. These indicators can be used to assess and analyze scientific domains.

According to definition first published in Nature (Grudniewicz et al 2019, 211), predatory journals and publishers prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship and are characterized by false or misleading information, deviation from best editorial and publication practices, a lack of transparency, and/or the use of aggressive and indiscriminate solicitation practices. 

Ways to spot a predatory journal:

• search for the journal using Publication channel search via Finnish Publication Forum. If the journal is not there or is at level 0, further inquiries should be made
• if the journal is Open Access, search the Directory of Open Access Journals. If the journal is not there, further inquiries should be made
• check weather the journal is findable via LUT Primo Journal search or indexed in Web of Science of Scopus
• see if the journal has been identified as a predatory using these lists
  • Beall's list
  • Stop Predatory Journals

Source: Grudniewicz, A. et al. 2019. Predatory journals: no definition, no defence. Nature, Vol. 576, pp. 210-212.