This is a list of questionable companies that purport to provide valid scholarly metrics at the researcher, article, or journal level.
- Advanced Science Index
- African Quality Centre for Journals
- American Standards for Journals and Research (ASJR)
- CiteFactor
- Cosmos Impact Factor
- Directory of Indexing and Impact Factor (DIIF)
- Directory of Journal Quality Factor
- Einstein Institute for Scientific Information (EISI)
- Eurasian Scientific Journal Index (ESJI)
- General Impact Factor
- Global Impact Factor
- IndexCopernicus
- Infobase Index
- Institute for Science Information (ISI)
- International Impact Factor Services
- International Institute for Research
- International Institute of Organized Research (I2OR)
- International Journal Impact Factor (IJIF)
- International Scientific Indexing (ISI)
- International Scientific Institute (ISI) (scijournal.org)
- International Services for Impact Factor and Indexing (ISIFI)
- International Society for Research Activity (ISRA) Journal Impact Factor (JIF)
- Jour Informatics
- Journal Impact Factor
- Journals Impact Factor (JIFACTOR)
- Journal Influence Factor
- Journals Consortium. Journal Influence Factor (JIF)
- JPR Impact Factor
- Open Academic Journals Index
- Pubicon Science Index
- Science Impact Factor
- Scientific Indexing Services (SIS)
- Scientific Journal Impact Factor
- SCIJOURNAL.ORG (International Scientific Institute)
- Technical Impact Factor
- Universal Impact Factor
Last updated: August 13, 2015
Criteria for Determining Misleading Metrics
- The website for the metric is nontransparent and provides little information about itself such as location, management team and its experience, other company information, and the like
- The company charges journals for inclusion in the list.
- The values (scores) for most or all of the journals on the list increase each year.
- The company uses Google Scholar as its database for calculating metrics (Google Scholar does not screen for quality and indexes predatory journals)
- The metric uses the term “impact factor” in its name.
- The methodology for calculating the value is contrived, unscientific, or unoriginal.
- The company exists solely for the purpose of earning money from questionable journals that use the gold open-access model. The company charges the journals and assigns them a value, and then the journals use the number to help increase article submissions and therefore revenue. Alternatively, the company exists as a front for an existing publisher and assigns values to that publisher’s journals.
Please leave comments that will help me improve this page. Thanks.
Thank you very much Jeffrey Beall sir for opening this blog.
Dear Sir
Directory of Journal Quality Factor is probably bogus agency for evaluation of Journals, its prime aim is to earn money.
Some major concerns are given below:
They write on their website that evaluation on journals is performed by factors like Journal Quality, Author’s Contribution, Publisher quality, Technical Quality, Manuscript Quality, and standard quality but I can’t find any well defined formula or criterion for assessment of journal on their website (only name of criteria is given, not detailed are given).
They proposed some credit based system in which just 4 point is given to author’s contribution out of 22.
They do not give credit to significant scholarly results and finding published by journals.
No editorial member lists are available on website having educational backgrounds relevant to their areas of responsibility.
It seems that they do not know basic publishing standards and COPE.
Owner admits that they are not registered.
WOAH!!! JPEE used point 6 above when I asked them about their impact factor!!!
Professor Jeffrey Beall, We respect you but you never understand this. We are not interested in earning money professor. You are please join with us. we will good one to the world and also we are properly get registered. with regards thiyagu – Directory of Journal quality factor
The link to the quality factor report on the DJQF site doesn’t seem to be working:
http://www.qualityfactor.org/report.html
Professor Liam Mac Liam, Please understand that we have started DJQF on 2014 and our calculating metric will be published on June’2014 and will include in that page (http://www.qualityfactor.org/report.html). So, really sorry for the inconvenience. Please check after July’2014 page will be included.
This is a good addition to the site but I am wondering about criteria 2, 3 and 5 because they also apply to Thompson Reuters. And yes, correct me if I am wrong, but that appears to include criterion 3.
As long as more journals have themselves added to Web of Science each year, it is a logical necessity that most scores go up even if the actual number of citations doesn’t change, for the simple reason that only citations in those journals that are part of the list are counted to calculate the scores for the journals on the list. There is no cheating involved, it is just the mechanics of how the scores are calculated, and they will stop increasing once the number of journals on the list plateaus.
It is thus hard to use this criterion to identify predatory ranking providers.
[…] terapeutica e spirulina che… – che fine ha fatto questa? – ha iniziato una lista delle metriche raccomandate agli stessi di prima. Tanto più se desiderano che una povera pensionata riconosca […]
Here is another. Please check http://www.impactfactorjournals.com
Thanks for sharing this. I’ve added it to the Meaningless Metrics page.
Another one to be added http://www.infobaseindex.com. Sir, please check.
Thanks — this appears to be some sort of attempt at creating a new abstracting and indexing service.
I believe I have another (via an OMICS journal I was invited to review for): General Impact Factor http://generalimpactfactor.com/
Thank you! I had not heard of this one. They are popping up all over the place.
[…] (http://scholarlyoa.com/individual-journals/), and the newer list of exploitative metric indexes (http://scholarlyoa.com/other-pages/misleading-metrics/). These are essential resources, particularly useful when conventional publishers conflate known […]
[…] now publish a list of questionable companies that supply impact factors to journals. As in the image above, journals […]
What is status of African journal of biotechnology and journal of medicinal plants research?
Can you supply the links (URLs) please?
[…] of deception. This is where the counterfeit industry fills the gaps. In fact, Beall now has a list of misleading metrics with a dozen or so impostors to the Impact Factor, many of which will sell you a number if you want […]
Dear pofessor, please take a look;
it is very suspicious:
American Standards for Journals and Research (ASJR)
at http://www.journal-metrics.com/
I agree. I will have a very close look at this … thing. Thank you for letting me know about it. Much appreciated.
[…] Det finns en lista över sidor som sysslar med vilseledande bibliometri. […]
[…] There is a list of pages dealing with misleadning metrics. […]
Another to be added is this http://www.bestjournals.in
Yes, this one was added within the past 24 hours. Thanks.
Can you recommend companies that provide reliable scholraly metrics?
Also could you please clarify the difference between Potential, possible, or probable predatory publishers, for instance a potential or possible would not have same detrimental effects as if confirmed?
Many thanks
I limit my work here to listing the bogus metrics companies. I don’t want to create a list of good ones.
I recommend avoiding all the publishers and journals included on my lists.
Thanks Jeffrey. Untill today I was under the impression that IndexCopernicus was a legitimate organization. You make me aware of the fact that provinding misleading metrics is a business that makes money instead of helping anyone out.
The opening line of their website is a good tip off:
“…the IC Journal Master List – contains currently over 13,000 journals from all over the world, including 1200 journals form Poland”
10% are “form Poland”…although I respect work from Poland, if 10% of the world’s most respected journals come from Poland, I’ve been publishing in the wrong country
The IC managed to get a contract to maintain technical side of Polish research assesment exercise. So many Polish publishers consider it a government endorsed & thus respectable index.
@Jane Doe
>The IC managed to get a contract to maintain technical side of
>Polish research assesment exercise. So many Polish
>publishers consider it a government endorsed & thus
>respectable index.
so shame on your govt.
Hi,
Please refer to my extended commentary on IC under http://scholarlyoa.com/2013/11/21/index-copernicus-has-no-value/.
I am a bit puzzled by its inclusion in this list. The only criterion that it meets with certainty is charging for inclusion. Other than that, you could fault it on 3 other criteria at the most, if you interpret them unfavourably, but then again Thomson Reuters 2-year Impact Factor also gets 4 out of 7 on this intepretation (as pointed out above). Any comments, Jeffrey?
Self-correction: it turns out that IC does not normally charge for inclusion, only for expediting the process.
Jeff-
Any thoughts on this one: http://www.impactfactorsearch.com/
I wonder if this violates Thomson Reuter’s copyright? What’s the business model here?
Hi,
please could you look at this website and give us some thoughts about this indexing(?) service?
“Directory of Research Journal Indexing” http://www.drji.org
They have their own metric (DRJI value), though i would be more curious about whether they are a legitimate abstracting/indexing service or just another attempt to find alternatives for journal reputation management.
Yes, actually please see my list of “Misleading Metrics” here: http://scholarlyoa.com/other-pages/misleading-metrics/. There is an increasing number of startup firms like this one that create and sell fake metrics to low quality publishers. This problem is growing.
This is a fake agency http://impactfactorservice.com/home/index
Yes, please see my list of Misleading Metrics (fake impact factor companies), here. Thank you.
[…] Misleading metrics companies […]
[…] Here there are two excellent lists of journals not to be trusted and publishers with questionable practices (lists have respectable 507 and 693 entries). Ideally, one should think twice before submitting to any of the journals/publishers in these lists. Also there is a list for misleading journal metrics. […]
Hi Jeffrey, I be interested in your thoughts about this journal Journal of Skin and Stem Cell, as they are pursuing one of our researchers. Their web site is http://journalssc.com/?page=home . Thanks
Hi, Mary, This appears to be a new (to me) publisher called Kowsar. I need to give it a full analysis, and this could take me up to several days. My first impression is not positive, so please tell you colleague to proceed with extreme caution. If possible, can you forward me the spam email she received? jeffrey.beall@ucdenver.edu Thanks.
I have also received an invitation from this Journal. Have you find out something else about this journal/publisher?
Thanks Jeff. I will forward the email. I too was not impressed with this publisher. We appreciate your opinions regarding the publisher.
Thanks Mr. Beall.
Where can I find a credible and reputable source of impact factor?
The impact factors are published in a proprietary (costs money) product called Journal Citation Reports. I recommend that you check with your librarian to see if your university has access.
Dear Sir,
Please correct me if I’m wrong. The Directory of Research Journal Indexing (DRJI) was included in your list of misleading metrics last year.But I could not find it anymore in your current list. Did I miss something?
Thanks.
I think so.
This firm only recently started to assign metrics, so I need to evaluate it.
Citefactor’s webpage says “This Account Has Been Suspended”
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