Introducing the All-New Journalytics Academic & Predatory Reports

We have some exciting news to share – a new and improved Journalytics Academic & Predatory Reports platform will soon be here. Our team has been working on multiple updates and enhancements to our tried and true platform that will benefit users in multiple ways. Along with our ongoing addition of new verified and predatory journals, users will experience better search results, new data points and visualizations, increased stability and speed, and more secure logins.

In addition to the visual elements and expanded analytics of this redesign, a key component is the full integration of our Journalytics and Predatory Reports databases. This integration will allow for comprehensive searches that present the full range of publishing opportunities and threats in a given area. Our goal is to facilitate journal discovery and evaluation so our users know the journals and know the risks.

Last month we hosted a webinar to give users a sneak peek at the upcoming changes, which include a new guided search page to jumpstart journal discovery, updated platform and journal card designs, and new data points such as fees and article output. Check out the video below or visit our YouTube channel where you’ll find a time-stamped table of contents in the description for easy navigation to specific points in the video.

A preview of the all-new Journalytics Academic & Predatory Reports.

A fresh look with more data

Guided search

The path to journal discovery now begins on our guided search page, where users can

  • search for a journal by title, ISSN, or keyword
  • access our database of legitimate and predatory journals
  • seamlessly sort verified journals with one of our featured metrics shortcuts
  • jump directly to one of 18 academic disciplines
Our guided search page with shortcuts to journal platforms, featured metric sorting, and disciplines.

New fully-integrated platform

Our redesigned platform now features full integration of verified and predatory journals into the same environment. First rolled out as part of our Journalytics Medicine & Predatory Reports platform, the integration has proven to be an invaluable enhancement. Users can feel confident with fully comprehensive search results that capture both legitimate and deceptive publishing opportunities, and they’ll also have the ability to filter out one or the other with just one click.

NO MORE GUESSWORK: Search results now include both legitimate and predatory journals

Search for publications by title, ISSN, disciplines or other keyword and know that we’ve left nothing to chance – verified and predatory journals each have their own design and data type, making clear whether the journal is listed in Journalytics or Predatory Reports.

Redesigned journal cards with new data points

Judging the quality of a journal, the likelihood of manuscript acceptance, publication timelines, and the potential impact of a journal can be difficult. To assist with clear and confident publication evaluations, we have added a few new data points to verified records to facilitate decision-making:

  • Open Access details – copyrights, archiving, and access details
  • Fees – who pays for publishing articles and how much?
  • Article output – how often does a journal publish per year?
  • We have reminaged the visualization of our CCI citation-backed metric, which shows the historical “influence” or citation-activity for each discipline in which a journal publishes.

The new Journalytics Academic will include the beta version of a new metric: The SDG Impact IntensityTM (SDGII)developed in partnership with the Saint Joseph’s University Haub School of Business.

The SDGII seeks to contextualize and understand the relevance of academic research in terms of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. Climate change, sustainability, and equity are among the most powerful forces for change in society, and yet they are ignored by traditional citation-based metrics. We hope to help lead the charge to change this dangerous oversight.

This is a pilot program that is currently included in a limited number of business journals but will soon be expanded to increase awareness of sustainability-minded journals publishing impactful research.

For more information, see our videos covering the SDGII on our YouTube channel.

New look, same deceptive operations

In recent years, awareness of the nature and scope of the problem presented by predatory publishers has increased within the scholarly community. At the same time, predatory publishers themselves have become more aware of what they need to do to appear to legitimate and avoid detection. Their tactics are evolving right along with efforts to combat them, and their numbers are growing – we currently have reports on more than 17,000 predatory publications.

  • Journal identification – each report provides the title, publisher, discipline(s), ISSN (if available), and website links for journal discovery and confirmation.
  • Violation categories – journal reports monitor the areas in which the deceptive behaviors occurred.
  • Violation severity – reports also track the severity of the deceptive behaviors.

By providing not just identifying information for predatory journals, but also a report on the nature, scope, and severity of their behaviors, we aim to equip our users with an understanding of the varied tactics predatory publishers employ. Our goal is to educate and inform researchers on the different profiles and archetypes of predatory journals we uncover, so they are better able to identify and avoid them as their career continues.

What’s next?

Be on the lookout for further updates on the timing of the release of the updated platform, as well as information on the upcoming new website that will serve as the central hub for all of our resources, complete with a portal for platform access, links to product information and criteria, and our blog.

We will also host another webinar as we move closer to the launch date for a final look at the upcoming enhancements. Stay tuned!

Journalytics Update: Twenty Hindawi Journals Recently Removed from the Journalytics Academic and Journalytics Medicine Databases

As part of our ongoing mission to protect and foster research integrity, the following journals from the publisher Hindawi have been removed from our Journalytics Academic and Journalytics Medicine databases for failure to meet our quality criteria, pending re-evaluation of their policies and practices:

  • Advances In Materials Science And Engineering (ISSN: 1687-8434)
  • Biomed Research International (ISSN: 2314-6133)
  • Computational And Mathematical Methods In Medicine (ISSN: 1748-670X)
  • Computational Intelligence And Neuroscience (ISSN: 1687-5265)
  • Contrast Media & Molecular Imaging (ISSN: 1555-4309)
  • Disease Markers (ISSN: 0278-0240)
  • Education Research International (ISSN: 2090-4002)
  • Evidence-Based Complementary And Alternative Medicine (ISSN: 1741-427X)
  • Journal Of Environmental And Public Health (ISSN: 1687-9805)
  • Journal Of Healthcare Engineering (ISSN: 2040-2295)
  • Journal Of Nanomaterials (ISSN: 1687-4110)
  • Journal Of Oncology (ISSN: 1687-8450)
  • Journal of Sensors (ISSN: 1687-725X)
  • Mathematical Problems In Engineering (ISSN: 1024-123X)
  • Mobile Information Systems (ISSN: 1574-017X)
  • Oxidative Medicine And Cellular Longevity (ISSN: 1942-0900)
  • Scanning (ISSN: 0161-0457)
  • Scientific Programming (ISSN: 1058-9244)
  • Security and Communication Networks (ISSN: 1939-0114)
  • Wireless Communications & Mobile Computing (ISSN: 1530-8669)

Wiley’s statement confirming ‘compromised articles’ in Hindawi special issues, coupled with strong evidence that at least some of the retracted content was generated by paper mills, points to the absence of a functional peer review system in place at the above listed journals. The backbone of not just any legitimate, trustworthy journal, but of all of academic and medical publishing, is a robust and closely managed peer review process.

We covered the wave of retraction notices in recent years from scientific and medical publications on our Journalytics Medicine blog in November. Retractions are, to a certain extent, ‘part of the process’ for journals, but retractions at this level by one publisher shows a breakdown in that process. It is our hope that the removal of these journals from our databases will motivate all scholarly and medical publishers to review their current publication processes and make the necessary improvements or changes to any substandard elements.

Cabells and scite partner to bring Smart Citations to Journalytics

Cabells, a provider of key intelligence on academic journals for research professionals, and scite, a platform for discovering and evaluating scientific articles, are excited to announce the addition of scite’s Smart Citations to Cabells Journalytics publication summaries.

Journalytics summary card with scite Smart Citations data

Journalytics is a curated database of over 11,000 verified academic journals spanning 18 disciplines, developed to help researchers and institutions optimize decision-making around the publication of research. Journalytics summaries provide publication and submission information and citation-backed data and analytics for comprehensive evaluations.

scite’s Smart Citations allow researchers to see how articles have been cited by providing the context of the citation and a classification describing whether it provides supporting or disputing evidence for the cited claim.

The inclusion of Smart Citations adds a layer of perspective to Journalytics metrics and gives users a deeper understanding of journal activity by transforming citations from a mere number into contextual data.

Lacey Earle, executive director of Cabells, says, “Cabells is thrilled to partner with scite in order to help researchers evaluate scientific articles through an innovative, comparative-based metric system that encourages rigorous and in-depth research.”

Josh Nicholson, co-founder and CEO of scite says of the partnership, “We’re excited to be working with Cabells to embed our Smart Citations into their Journalytics summaries. Smart Citations help you assess the quantity of citations a journal has received as well as the quality of these citations, with a focus on identifying supporting and disputing citations in the literature.”


about cabells

Cabells generates actionable intelligence on academic journals for research professionals.  On the Journalytics platform, an independent, curated database of more than 11,000 verified scholarly journals, researchers draw from the intersection of expertise, data, and analytics to make confident decisions to better administer research. In Predatory Reports, Cabells has undertaken the most comprehensive and detailed campaign against predatory journals, currently reporting on deceptive behaviors of over 14,000 publications. By combining its efforts with those of researchers, academic publishers, industry organizations, and other service providers, Cabells works to create a safe, transparent and equitable publishing ecosystem that can nurture generations of knowledge and innovation. For more information please visit Cabells or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

about scite

scite is a Brooklyn-based startup that helps researchers better discover and evaluate scientific articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or disputing evidence. scite is used by researchers from dozens of countries and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health. For more information, please visit scite, follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, and download our Chrome or Firefox plugin. For careers, please see our jobs page.