Various journals claim to be indexed by worldwide databases like INSPEC, Google Scholar etc. How can I verify these claims?
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1You probably can't. That is why you send papers to the journals you know or the ones where the people you cite, publish their papers. – Alexandros Sep 22 '15 at 14:05
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1Is there a reason that you (or a colleague who has access) can't just check the database? – jakebeal Sep 22 '15 at 14:13
Google Scholar is not a normal indexing service, in the sense that it does attempt to index only "trusted sources." You should be somewhat wary of any publication venue that advertises itself as being indexed by Google Scholar, since this is practically meaningless.
For INSPEC and many other indexing services, the service itself may have a list of indexed journals which you can find on their website. (See here for INSPEC's, for example.)
If your institution subscribes to the indexing service, you can check yourself if the journal is indexed there.
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And if your institution subscribes to the database, you could try looking up papers from it (often you can specify a particular journal). – Jon Custer Sep 22 '15 at 14:14
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no problem! Of course, each database I've ever used does things at least a little bit differently (just for confusion sake it seems). – Jon Custer Sep 22 '15 at 14:17
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+1 for "You should be somewhat wary of any publication venue that advertises itself as being indexed by Google Scholar" – Andrew Sep 22 '15 at 16:26
