PUBLISHERS

  • Scientific publishers are an indispensable link in the dissemination of results and achievements in the scientific community. An increasing number of publishers utilize the advantages of publishing scientific literature in the open access environment.
  • Different publishers follow different policies relative to open access. Sometimes policies may vary even among individual journals from the same publisher. The SHERPA/ROMEO portal is of great help here because it collects data on the policies of publishers and their journals. Despite the fact that the data is correct in most cases, it is still good to verify it on the publishers’ websites.
  • Open access brought with it the appearance of unreliable or predatory publishers who try to exploit researchers and the system of open publishing. Their business model is based on charging APC for publishing the articles. They try to present their journals as respected and authentic, which is not the case. 

Think.Check.Submit is a new initiative in the open publishing environment that with the help of quality control indicators helps researchers publish the results of their research in open access: it enables searching for trustworthy scientific journals or publishers, or on the other hand, the identification of journals and publishers of dubious quality (i.e., predatory publishers). Accessible at http://thinkchecksubmit.org/.

This tool has been developed by a group of professionals who maintain the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) website in cooperation with academic or commercial publishers, professional associations, and organizations: