The American College of Research Librarians (ACRL) Scholarly Communication Toolkit, Evaluating Journals suggests using Think Check Submit as a tool to help researchers select reliable, and trusted journals and publishers. The ACRL toolkit also offers a section on Determining Journal Quality for open access journals as well as other journals.
This section of the library guide offers resources to help the researcher determine the quality of a journal/publisher. Such topics as, journal metrics, predatory vs professional journals, open access content and more.
This section briefly explains what impact factors and almetrics are. Links to suggested databases are provided to guide you in your decision.
According to the American College of Research Libraries (ACRL) the impact factor is:
"Calculated as the average number of cited articles divided by the number of citable items in a journal in the past two years, the impact factor illuminates which journals are most influential in a scholar’s given field. In other words, it is a measure of how often a journal is cited by other journals in a field."
For more information on the history of the impact factor please see, Impact factor in an ACRL guide.
The ACRL also describes altmetrics as:
"Altmetrics measures how many times a journal article is downloaded, shared, commented on, and cited in social media outlets and can provide a meaningful indicator of the impact an article has among different user populations."
For more information about almetrics, please see the ACRL guide.
