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While looking for a journal to publish my paper I noticed that one of the people I follow on ResearchGate has published his paper in

Journal of Advances in Mathematics

I never heard of this journal before yet it has impact factor of 1.244 or at least that is what it says on the journal website.

Is this a real mathematics journal or fraud? Thanks.

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    Please also see Should we name names when talking about bad publishers and researchers?
    – Wrzlprmft ♦
    Aug 2, 2015 at 7:16
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    A good indication that something is fishy is that the name is "Journal of <name of reputed journal>".
    – Tobias Kildetoft
    Aug 2, 2015 at 9:52
  • I've received a fair amount of spam from/about this journal, and that's all I've ever heard of it. That alone is pretty good circumstantial evidence that the journal is bogus.
    – Mark Meckes
    Aug 2, 2015 at 16:27
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    For math, here is quick way to see it is not up to snuff (assuming you have access): this journal is not even_indexed_ in MathSciNet, let alone reviewed. Another quick check: see if it's claimed IF agrees with whats on Thompsons Reuters. If it doesn't, or is not even listed, it's probably a scam.
    – Kimball
    Aug 3, 2015 at 2:23

3 Answers 3

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The Journal of Advances in Mathematics and its publisher are mentioned in this blog post at Scholarly Open Access. The post explains why the post's author, Jeffrey Beall, believes that the journal and its publisher are not legitimate.

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  • Is it safe to trust all journals published by Springer or other big publishers?
    – MrDi
    Aug 2, 2015 at 7:27
  • I wouldn't know. But I do have a book published by Springer that has terrible editing, so it seems that there are times their quality control is poor.
    – JRN
    Aug 2, 2015 at 7:28
  • @MrDi Define "trust".
    – Faheem Mitha
    Aug 2, 2015 at 9:15
  • @FaheemMitha, can a journal published by springer be fake or fraud?
    – MrDi
    Aug 2, 2015 at 10:16
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    @MrDi I think the answer is "probably yes". There are precedents. There was a famous example of an Elsevier journal which was run as someone's feifdom. There was even a court case over it - the person who was running it didn't want to be removed. Major publishing houses are not magically immune to this kind of phenomenon. Ultimately, they are businesses, and aren't necessarily very active about stopping fraudulent behavior as long as it doesn't impact their bottom line. Though presumably they would act on complaints, if sufficiently many were received.
    – Faheem Mitha
    Aug 2, 2015 at 10:28
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If you are not a professional mathematician I'm not sure why you're interested in the legitimacy of a math journal. (That may sound elitist. It is not intended to be: really, I don't understand why someone else would need to worry about this.) If you are then you should be able to look at a journal's webpage and evaluate it yourself. Wondering whether a journal might be legitimate because it has a certain impact factor is a bit like measuring the Chinese emperor's nose by asking everyone in China when you are the emperor's barber. There is no reason to look at statistical measurements done by others of absolutely uncertain fidelity when you can just see for yourself. (But to be honest: I did notice the text about the impact factor described in o4tlulz's answer.)

I had never heard of this journal before, but 15 minutes on its webpage allowed me to come to a conclusion regarding its legitimacy. I looked at the editorial board, the publication policy and then started skimming papers: some just to get a general sense and then a smaller number in areas of mathematics that I know relatively well. I stopped looking when I saw this paper, which was as decisive a confirmation of the impression I had acquired as one could possibly hope for.

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  • Well, as strange as it seems, maths journals are not read by professional mathematicians only (and physics journals are not read by etc.).
    – Massimo Ortolano
    Aug 2, 2015 at 8:52
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    @Massimo: Reading a journal (or more practically, reading some papers in a journal) is not the same as evaluating the journal for legitimacy. I have had the occasion to read papers in non-math journals, but I have never had the need to evaluate a non-math journal. Note though that I am not at all saying that this occasion would not or should not arise; I am literally saying that I don't myself understand when it would occur.
    – Pete L. Clark
    Aug 2, 2015 at 17:21
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    It seems the link is broken.
    – JRN
    Aug 6, 2017 at 10:05
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If you follow the link of the impact factor it takes you to this page: http://cirworld.org/if and at the very end of the page you can see that

Impact factor is calculated with process of IF calculation procedure of CIR.

So the impact factor you are looking at is not the actual Thomson Reuters IF (I cannot check at the moment if it is included in the list of Journals.)

This, together with the mention in the ScholarlyOA, makes it more than suspicious. I would recommend staying away from this journal and its publisher.

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  • Is it safe to trust all journals published by Springer or other big publishers?
    – MrDi
    Aug 2, 2015 at 7:27

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