Abstract

The evolution of the MIAR project (Matriu d’Informació per l’Avaluació de Revistes ) –Journal evaluation information matrix– is described. Originally MIAR  was designed to quantify the indexing of humanities and social sciences journals in bibliographic data bases. Given the present availability of various journal evaluation systems in Spain, MIAR could evolve into a collaborative portal where stakeholders can share the main features of the journals in which they participate directly or indirectly. The project would use social networks, voting and commenting systems, and technologies like open linked data, thus enabling a greater dissemination and socialization of the data collected for each publication. In this way data could be better used by the three most directly concerned groups: referees, publishers and authors/readers.

Abstract

The presence of journals considered predatory are analysed in various bibliographic databases and in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Of the list produced by Jeffrey Beall of possible or probable predatory open access academic journals, 944 of those are reviewed, cross-referencing their ISSN with the Information Matrix for the Analysis of Journals (MIAR) developed at the University of Barcelona. It is then determined whether these journals appear in citation indexes such as Web of Science or Scopus, in multidisciplinary databases, in specialised databases or in the DOAJ directory. The study concludes that there is no significant widespread presence of predatory journals in bibliographic databases, although some such as Emerging Sources Citation Index, Veterinary Science Database or DOAJ show somewhat higher values than expected, and so should be monitored and revised in the future by database producers or by Beall’s list.

Abstract

The presence of journals considered predatory are analysed in various bibliographic databases and in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Of the list produced by Jeffrey Beall of possible or probable predatory open access academic journals, 944 of those are reviewed, cross-referencing their ISSN with the Information Matrix for the Analysis of Journals (MIAR) developed at the University of Barcelona. It is then determined whether these journals appear in citation indexes such as Web of Science or Scopus, in multidisciplinary databases, in specialised databases or in the DOAJ directory. The study concludes that there is no significant widespread presence of predatory journals in bibliographic databases, although some such as Emerging Sources Citation Index, Veterinary Science Database or DOAJ show somewhat higher values than expected, and so should be monitored and revised in the future by database producers or by Beall’s list.