Quality Assurance

Articles published in trusted open access journals are peer-reviewed and achieve higher impact factors in certain subject areas. However, in the course of open access publishing, dubious business models have emerged.
 

"Predatory publishers" refers to open-access-publishers with a dubious business model. This includes business practices that offer publishing services in return for publication fees, but do not perform them at all or only inadequately. For example, no quality assurance process (e.g. peer review) is conducted.

• Quality-assured journals are listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals(DOAJ).
• Reputable publishers are members of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) or the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

If not listed there, it does not necessarily mean that the publisher or journal is not reputable. Since inclusion in the directories requires a prior review process, new journals and publishers are sometimes not yet registered.
 

To identify trusted journals and publishers, we recommend checking the following aspects:

• Is the ISSN of the journal correct?
• Is the journal evaluated by reputable databases?
• Is the publisher a member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) or theCommittee on Publication Ethics (COPE)?
• Is the journal evaluated in the "Journal Citation Reports" or in other established metrics?
• Who are the editors? Do the editors appear in several unrelated journals?
• Is the website/platform coherent (or does it contain errors, standard phrases etc.)?
• Are unrealistic statements or promises made regarding the review period?
• Are the contractual agreements serious? When publishing in open access journals, authors should retain their rights of use, pay article fees only after acceptance or publication, and find clear information about the amount of the costs on the journal's website.

You can find a detailed checklist on the website Think!Check!Submit!. In addition, you can check the quality of individual articles in the Web of Science or Scopus databases.
 

Tools

• The Leuphana B!SON version supports researchers in finding a suitable open access journal and indicates funding opportunities at Leuphana for the listed journals.
• An overview of quality-assessed open access journals can be found in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).
• The Directory of Open Books (DOAB) lists peer-reviewed open access books and trusted open access book publishers.
• Journal Selector, Journal Guide and Quality Open Access Market (QOAM) provide information about publishing details and help determining the impact.