Journal Assessment Resources

What is Open Access?

Have you noticed that you have to pay for some journal articles and not others? Have you noticed the term "Open Access" being used to describe "free" articles?

Open Access is a movement developed by scholars and librarians to make sure that scientific research is avaialble to readers at no cost. You can find open access articles in a journal which charges for some articlse and not others -- or you can find journals that are complately open access.

Learn more about Open Access:

Open Access and Why Does it Matter? a research guide from Brown University

Wikipedia's Open Access page

SPARC is a leading organization in the Open Access movement

The US government has mandated that all federally funded research results be open access. Read the White House press release about it.

You search for resources using Google Scholar or MEDLINE or Web of Science – how do you know the reputation or quality of the journals you find? How do you know – especially when searching Google Scholar – that what you find isn’t a predatory journal?

Here are some sources and methods that scholars use to assess the quality and reputation of a journal.

Journal Citation Reports
Provides multidimensional profiles for assessing the world’s leading journals. Please note that from off-campus you must use VPN. See Other Important Library Information Off-Campus Access bars for more details.
Beall's List
Website that lists potentially predatory journals and publishers.
Scimago
Includes the journals and country scientific indicators developed from the information contained in the Scopus® database (Elsevier B.V.). These indicators can be used to assess and analyze scientific domains. Journals can be compared or analysed separately. Country rankings may also be compared or analysed separately. Journals can be grouped by subject area (27 major thematic areas), subject category (309 specific subject categories) or by country. Citation data is drawn from over 34,100 titles from more than 5,000 international publishers and country performance metrics from 239 countries worldwide.
Think, Check, Submit
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.

BME 498 - Special Topics: Biomedical Research: Design

Librarian

Jill Lagerstrom

What is Open Access?

Journal Assessment Resources