The Development of the Journal Evaluation Tool to Evaluate the Credibility of Publication Venues

Abstract

INTRODUCTION A shared concern among librarians who work in an academic environment is finding effective mechanisms to help faculty identify suitable publication venues. Determining the suitability is now also complicated by the need to determine the credibility of the venue itself, to ensure that faculty select a venue that is held in esteem. DESCRIPTION OF PROJECT At Loyola Marymount University (LMU), a medium-sized, private institution in the United States, three librarians developed a tool to assist faculty in determining the credibility of a publication venue, specifically for open access journals. This article outlines the development of a tool to evaluate journals, the pilot testing process, and some of the measures taken for the promotion, outreach, and implementation of the tool. The goal of the tool is to inform publishing decisions using an objective measure of credibility and to empower authors to make publishing decisions for themselves. NEXT STEPS The authors have released the tool with a Creative Commons CC-BY license in order to enable the broad dissemination, use, and enhancement of it by anyone interested in using or developing the tool further. It will be valuable to understand the adapted use cases of the tool and learn about experiences from other librarians using this tool at their institutions.