Choosing what publication venues to submit your manuscript to can be challenging, given the explosion in the number of journal titles in recent years. The proliferation of titles facilitated by the Internet means that journal titles spring up to cater for increasingly niche areas, and getting the balance between focus and generality can be difficult. Unfortunately the Internet has also allowed the setup of poor quality journals, only too willing to take your article, with minimal or non existent peer review, for a fee.
The Internet allows for quicker and cheaper dissemination of research findings (publications). This low cost model also allowed for journals to be made Open Access. Unfortunately some of these Open Access Journals are of very poor quality, and charge a fee for publishing articles often without any peer review. These Journals are referred to as "Predatory Open Access Journals". Note: These journals exist purely to make money by charging OA fees, and do not aim to advance the scholarly landscape.
Initially, lists were maintained (the most famous being 'Beall's List', named after it's compiler Jeffrey Beall, an American Librarian) but issues such as maintaining the currency of the list and disputes over the legitimacy or otherwise of some entries meant that researchers would have to develop the skills to evaluate a journal individually rather than rely on a list.
Additionally, a number of resources exist that can help you to independently evaluate the quality of a journal before you submit an article or agree to become an editor or peer reviewer for the journal. These resources include:
"Think. Check. Submit. helps researchers identify trusted journals and publishers for their research. Through a range of tools and practical resources, this international, cross-sector initiative aims to educate researchers, promote integrity, and build trust in credible research and publications."
Loyola Marymount University's Journal Evaluation Tool gives you a Rubric, based on 16 questions that you score from 3 (good), down to 1 (Poor) and a final scorecard that can indicate journal quality. It is available Open Access under a Creative Commons licence.
The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals. DOAJ is independent. All funding is via donations, 22% of which comes from sponsors and 78% from members and publisher members. All DOAJ services are free of charge including being indexed in DOAJ. All data is freely available.
DOAJ operates an education and outreach program across the globe, focusing on improving the quality of applications submitted.
Above principles were produced by the Committee on Publication Ethics, the Directory of Open Access Journals, the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, and the World Association of Medical Editors.
View the below recording of an excellent webinar delivered by Claire Sewell, University of Cambridge Office of Scholarly Communications (CC-BY licence).
Journal ranking systems aim to rank journal performance based purely on citation counts to each journal in a discipline. All use different calculations and all are based on a finite and curated list of journals indexed by the system. As such they are not a comprehensive or exhaustive list of all journals, and many good quality journals are not included. They may though, provide a useful comparison of two or more journals under your consideration (provided all are included in the index).
From Clarivate analytics (Journal Citation Reports), and based on the Web of Science journal set.
From Elsevier, and based on the Scopus journal set.
From ScImago (University of Granada), and based on the Scopus set.
From CWTS (University of Leiden), and based on the Scopus set.