Where to publish
Assess the scientific trustworthiness of a publishing house
Henry Oldenburg, founder of the Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London (1665), the first and longest lasting scientific periodical in the world, identified the four fundamental functions of a scientific journal:
registration - registration of the intellectual property authorship
dissemination - dissemination of the intellectual work
peer review - certification of the quality of the research by means of peer review
archive - storage of the intellectual work over time
Still today, at a time when the models of academic publishing are being redefined partly owing to the effect of the increasing use of digital technologies, these attributes ensure the unchanging capacity to verify the quality of a publishing house. In particular we need to consider the capacity of a publishing house to provide a trustworthy peer-review system, a high-quality editorial product (packaging, long-term storage, accessibility) and a wide dissemination within the scientific community.
The choice of publishing house also depends on other objective factors such as the subject relevance, the longevity (of the journal, the series or the publisher specialising in a specific area) but also on the capacity to manage efficiently the communication with the author. There may also be aspects that are less measurable, and undoubtedly debatable, such as the relevance and prestige of the publisher within the scientific community of reference.
An important aspect to be taken into consideration when choosing a publishing house is the possibility to publish in open access, an ethical choice that the Library and the Scuola Normale as a whole support with precise actions, which you can explore in greater depth at the pages curated by the Servizio Valutazione della Ricerca e Open Science (The Service for the Assessment of Research and Open Science) of the SNS and in the specific section curated by the SNS Library. Please bear in mind that this option may in reality derive from a contractual obligation when the research on which the publication is based has been funded by subjects (such as ERC, Horizon Europe or Telethon) that specify commitment to open access publication.
The impact of the periodical publications on the scientific community of reference is measurable quantitatively via bibliometric analysis, widely used for the STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and also, albeit in a more marginal way, for the human and social sciences. Bibliometrics utilises mathematical and statistical techniques to produce, on the basis of the citations, objective and quantitative data relating to the publications and their dissemination, and in recent years has taken on an increasingly important role in the research quality assessment processes, giving rise to considerable criticism in the scientific world. Some bibliometric indicators, such as the impact factor, may be utilised indirectly to assess the extent of dissemination of a journal; it is with this aim that we mention some of them in the list below.
Tools useful for choosing the publishing house most suited to your needs
Directory of Open Access Books
[books relating to all subjects]
DOAB, founded in 2012 by the OAPEN Foundation and supported by a scientific committee consisting of academics coming from all over the world, is a search service that indexes and provides access to open access books that have passed scientific (peer reviewed process). Based on the concept of community, DOAB also aims to aid users in finding reliable publishers for the publishing of open access books; consult the section "Publisher" of the FAQs for researchers. All DOAB services are free of charge and all data are freely available.
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
[journals relating to all subjects]
DOAJ is a reliable and respected database that indexes journals published in open access in all linguistic and geographical areas. For each journal it gives the subject cover, the presence of an editorial committee, the publisher and the type of open licence utilised. With over 20,000 journals indexed, DOAJ enables the limiting of the search to those of your study area, to those headings that do not entail publication costs (diamond journals) and that allow you to keep your property rights over the work.
Participating publishers undertake to guarantee quality contents, and the presence of a journal in DOAJ constitutes a guarantee in this sense, attesting to a solid editorial context and barrier-free access to your article.
EigenFactor
[journals of pure and applied sciences]
This portal, produced within an academic project co-ordinated by the University of Washington, in the section Journal Ranking for each indexed journal makes freely available descriptive data (scientific area of reference indicated with the Institute for Scientific Information category, start date of publications) and bibliometric data measured with the EF (= EigenFactor), a mathematical model that takes into account the various time scales on which the citations are verified and that does not only calculate the citations received in other journals but also utilises the structure of the entire network of citations to assess the prestige of the journal.
Lists of scientific journals curated by the ANVUR
[journals of the following academic disciplines (SSD - Settori Scientifico Disciplinari) defined by the Italian Minister of University and Research (MUR): nr 8 (Civil Engineering and Architecture), 10 (Classical studies, philological-literary and historical-artistic), 11 (historical, philosophical, pedagogical and psychological sciences), 12 (Juridical sciences), 13 (Economic and statistical sciences), 14 (Political and social sciences)]
It is opportune that the members of the Italian academic community be acquainted with these lists of scientific journals, classified by ANVUR (the National Agency for the Assessment of the University and Research System) for the calculation of the indicators of the ASN (the National Scientific Qualification), as of 2012, and for accreditation of the PhD courses starting from the 33rd cycle (academic year 2017-18). These are in fact lists of merit: to publish in these journals implies a recognition; in particular, to publish in a journal belonging to Band A makes for a higher assessment. Classification is carried out predominantly for the human and social sciences, identified as “non-bibliometric” sectors; the other areas are excluded. Defined by group of experts for each area on the basis of a precise regulation for each assessment campaign, these lists have often been criticised by the scientific community, although they can be an orientation criterion in the choice of publishing house.
Elsevier journal finder
[[Elsevier journals in all subjects, predominantly of the English-language editorial area and in English]
This tool aids in finding journals published by the Elsevier group that could be most suitable for the publication of your scientific article. You can insert the abstract of your paper in the search box or another element useful for identifying the study subject (key words, objectives, title of the journal).
European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences (ERIH)
[journals of the humanities and social sciences in all languages]
Curated by the European Science Foundation, ERIH PLUS indexes academic journals selected in accordance with precise criteria of inclusion. For each journal it provides bibliographical-editorial data, peer-reviewing systems, subject area, open access policy and indexing in Sherpa-Romeo and DOAJ.
Finding the Right Academic Publisher
[university press journals and books, especially in the English-speaking area]
K. Knox and A. van Deventer, authors of The Dissertation-to-Book Workbook (Chicago Univ. Press, 2023), have published online this guide that comes with a detailed list which indicates the most relevant university presses for each study field.
How to assess a journal
[journals of all subjects]
A really easy to use poster-guide curated by Christie Hurrell, Jessica Lange, Dominique Lapierre, Elizabeth Yates and Lise Brin on behalf of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries.
Journal Citation Report (JCR)
(resource with reserved access on the SNS network )
[journals of all subjects, predominantly of the English-language editorial area and in English]
Accessible on the Clarivate platform (in the Products section), Journal Citation Report is a systematic and objective tool for the assessment and comparison of scientific publications and is the tool of reference for bibliometric analysis calculated on individual journals. The analysis is extremely broad, regarding the over 60 million titles indexed in the "Arts & Humanities", “Science Citation Index Expanded” and “Social Sciences Citation Index” collections of the Web of Science database.
The most well known bibliometric indicator of the prestige of journals is the Impact factor (IF), which measures the number of citations obtained by a journal in the last two or five years in comparison with other journals of the same area; the Cited Half Life expresses the median age of the articles of the journal under examination cited in the year of reference; that is, it provides an indication of the persistence of citations over time; lastly, the Immediacy Index indicates the mean number of times that an article is cited and the speed at which the articles of a journal are cited.
For further study consult JCR Reference Guide.
JUFO Portal
[publishers of scientific series, proceedings and books of all the subjects and in all languages]
JUFO is a service of the national classification system of Finnish research in which each entity (scientific series, conference proceedings and book publishers) is assessed according to 3 ascending qualitative levels, from 1 to 3 (publication channels that do not fulfil the criteria for level 1 are assigned to level 0).
You can carry out searches without registering although registered users enjoy additional functions.
You can narrow down your search on the basis, for example, of the publication channel level or the editorial policy regarding open access.
Informational page on the use of the portal.
Scholarly publishing : a guide to publishing strategically
[all subjects and all types of publication]
We draw your attention to this tool which, albeit originating in a geographical scenario as distant as Australia, is complete and, considering a wide range of research output, also dedicates pages to the modes of registering a study, a report or a research trial by its author, registering a preprint and assessing the best congress site at which to present a paper.
Scimago Journal Rank
[journals of all subjects, with a prevalence in the STEM area; predominantly of the English-language editorial area and in English]
Scimago Journal & Country Rank (SJCR) is a public portal that shows scientific indicators that measure the degree of influence of a scientific journal, calculated starting from the citational data retrieved from the Scopus database. The data retrieved relate to countries and journals and may be of use in the choice of the journal to which you wish to propose your work. In particular we draw your attention to the Journal Rankings section. The platform takes its name from the SCImago Journal Rank (SJR), a ranking indicator developed starting from the algorithm known as Google PageRank TM, which shows the visibility of the journals contained in Scopus since 1996. Periodicals can be compared and analysed separately or they can be grouped by sector (27 large thematic areas), thematic category (309 specific categories) or country, so as to obtain performance metrics from them. Citation data are drawn from over 34,000 titles produced by more than 5000 international publishers.
Scopus [bibliometric indices]
(resource with reserved access on the SNS network )
[journals of all subjects with a prevalence in the STEM area; predominantly of the English-language editorial area and in English]
The well known Elsevier database has available two metrics calculated on the individual journal:
CiteScore Rank, a bibliometric indicator that measures the mean of the citations received and the percentile of the journal in the subject sector of reference calculated on the basis of the ASJC (All Science Journal Classification) category.
Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) is a sophisticated metric that intrinsically takes into account the specific sector differences in citation practices, comparing the citations of each journal for publication with the potential for citation of its field, defined as the set of the publications that cite that journal. SNIP thus enables direct comparison of the journals in various fields, since a single citation is more useful for the journals in sectors in which the probability of citations is lower and vice versa.
SNIP is calculated annually by the Scopus data and is freely available next to CiteScore and SJR,as shown at this page. And this page details the methods of calculating the various bibliometric indicators utilised in the Scopus database.
Springer Journal Suggester
[journals of all subjects; predominantly of the English-language editorial area and in English]
A tool for finding the journal most suitable for publishing your manuscript among all the journals published by the publishers Springer and BioMed Central.
Think. Check. Submit
[all types of publication in all the subject areas]
This platform, by means of a series of tools and practical resources, aids researchers in finding journals and publishers when choosing where to publish a book, a contribution to a miscellaneous collection or a paper in a journal. This international project, promoted by such prestigious subjects as the Association of University Presses, DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals), ISSN International Centre, LIBER (Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche) and OAPEN, aims to promote trust in research projects and credible publications.
Per approfondire:
COPE : promoting integrity in scholarly research and its publications
Avoid predatory publishing
The last few years have witnessed the rise of the term predatory publisher to define an exploitative academic publishing model, in which the journal or publisher gives priority to business interests to the detriment of the author. It is characterised by misleading information, deviates from the standard peer review process, is not transparent and often utilises aggressive soliciting practices. The following factors may arouse suspicion and enable the identification of a predatory journal:
- a rapid and steep rise in the number of articles published in a journal;
- a request to the author for the payment of a fee to publish in open access (APC = article processing charge);
- the absence of a journal from the JCR may also give rise to suspicion as to its trustworthiness;
- an exaggerated claim to be indexed in a database or in a prestigious repertory (such as DOAJ or JCR).
Tools that can help to identify predatory publishers:
Identifying predatory journals tools [edited by Turku University]
Journals and publishers that falsely claim they are indexed in DOAJ
Retraction watch
This tool measures both the retractions of articles published in scientific journals and articles and peer reviews that show evidence of texts produced using ChatGPT; these data thus enable the identification of journals of little trustworthiness.