Should I publish in a journal that appears on Beall’s list?

Question

I have written an article in the field of Information Systems and I would like to publish it in a journal. I downloaded the Scimago journal rank, and decided to publish in a journal called Journal of Theoretical and Applied Information Technology. This journal appears to be in the quartile Q3 of Scimago, but one thing that caught my attention is that they publish three volumes per month. Each accepted submission must pay a cost of 300 USD.

When I was searching for the reputation of this journal, I found that it is listed in the famous or infamous Beall’s list. My questions are:

• Why does this journal appear on Scimago if it is a predatory one?
• Would it be a good idea to publish in it?

Answer 1

Beall's list is grounds for high suspicion, not a ban. In the case of this particular journal, it looks like not a very good journal, but not an obvious scam. Google Scholar finds a number of articles with moderate citations, and on first inspection they don't look like metric gaming, so it looks like it wouldn't be a black mark on one's record.

Bottom line: probably legit, but if you've done good work isn't there somewhere better than you can publish it?

Answer 2

I see several red flags, which don't prove the journal is bad but make me very suspicious. At the very least, the journal is run in an eccentric way.

1. At the bottom of the editorial board page, it says "You can join the elite panel of JATIT as member technical editorial board if you hold a PhD in computing and have at-least 10 publications in International Journals/Conferences. Please drop your CV at managing_editor at jatit.org. Members lists and requests are reviewed at the end of every year in regional advisory panel meeting." Of course this doesn't guarantee everyone who applies will be accepted, but it strongly suggests that they feel a PhD and ten papers is a reasonable criterion for being an editor. No mainstream journal takes such an approach, and it raises the question of why they would do this. One possibility is that the publisher wants to publish as many papers as they can (to increase profits) and is willing to accept just about any editor who might help with that.

2. The papers show that copyright is held by JATIT & LLS, which is worrisome given the publication fee. It's common for open access journals to charge a fee but make the paper available under an open license (typically a Creative Commons license) for free distribution and use by anyone. Instead, JATIT owns the papers and can put whatever restrictions they like on them (including changing their policies in the future, for example to put the papers behind a paywall). They don't seem to be abusing this power, but they could if they wanted to. I see no good reason for this approach. It suggests that the publisher either doesn't know how gold open access journals generally work or is deliberately taking a different approach, and both possibilities are worrisome.

3. When I flip through the published papers, they look very diverse in topics and approaches. Is the editorial board capable of handling such diverse papers? I don't know, but I doubt it: it's really difficult to handle a submission that falls outside your area of expertise. The easiest way is to apply low standards, which I'd bet is what happens here.

Some journals clearly look fraudulent when examined carefully, and there's no evidence that anyone is actually trying to run a real journal. That's not the impression I get from JATIT. If I had to guess based on admittedly insufficient information, I'd guess that the editors are trying to run a real journal while the publisher is trying to make money (which is not bad in itself but creates a bias towards publishing lousy papers).

As for whether it's a good idea to publish there, one big issue is how it would look. When I see a paper listed in an unknown journal on someone's CV, the first thing I wonder about is what the worse papers published there are like. (Do they regularly publish junk, or does publishing there demonstrate that your paper meets a respectable professional standard?) When you flip through JATIT, do you see papers that look worse that you think yours is? If so, I'd be wary about publishing there.

Answer 3

Legit journals charge open access fees to make your article available in order to get more citations. My University has $3000 dlls a year grant for open access publications, it is cheaper to our university to pay fees than having to subscribe to paid journals. JATIT is legit, I have published few articles there, it is also listed in the Australian ERA Journal list. It is indexed by Scopus that is the minimum standard for credible journals. JATIT is a low ranked journal but credible enough. To those people that ask why should we pay money for a low ranked journal, the issue is time, many journals take two years to get something published while JATIT can get your publication published in 3 to 6 months. Many of us are on a time clock for tenure and cannot afford to wait 3 years for a publication so we rather pay. Also, we need citations and low ranked closed access journal generates hardly any citation.

In few words, JATIT is OK but I wouldn't bank only on this journal to get tenure. It is fine to have few articles from this low-ranked journal but you need better to be considered a credible researcher.

Our University does not use Beall's list, the main criteria for evaluation is indexed by SCOPUS at least but preferably by ISI Thompson rueters. The Beall list is very biased, JATIT is in Pakistan so anything that comes from India, Pakistan, China, etc., that charges money goes to this list right away disregarding indexes, impact factors, etc.