A checklist is intended primarily to support the work of the Publication Forum’s evaluation panels, but it can also help, for example, researchers assess the reliability and rigor of a publication channel.
Scientific publishing activity in so-called “grey zone” publication channels—positioned in the JUFO classification at the boundary between predatory journals and Level 1—has been increasing. A key challenge with grey zone channels is that they formally meet the Level 1 criteria, yet the assessment of scientific quality may not operate as carefully and reliably across the board.
This development is driven by competition among commercial open access publishers for author fees (article processing charges, APCs), which encourages journals to publish as many articles as possible while minimizing the time spent on editorial work and quality assessment.
In 2023, the Steering Group of the Publication Forum (JUFO) decided to map the research community’s experiences of inadequate quality assessment practices in scholarly journals more systematically. These experiences were collected in spring 2024 through a dedicated campaign, and the work has continued since then in the re-evaluation of Publication Forum level classifications.
The evaluation of publication channels is carried out by Publication Forum’s discipline-specific evaluation panels, comprising approximately 300 researchers from Finnish universities and research institutes. The checklist was developed to support the panels’ work and to guide the identification of problematic practices related to the publication process, editorial and peer review procedures, and the publication decisions made by the channels. The checklist facilitates a comprehensive and systematic assessment of whether an individual channel can be accepted into Level 1. It is also intended to harmonize evaluation practices across disciplines.
Publication Forum also aims to help researchers identify reliable and high-quality publication channels in their respective fields.
During the autumn, Publication Forum’s evaluation panels were invited to comment on a draft version of the checklist. The panels reported that features of the problematic practices listed have increasingly also been observed in the practices of journals published by high-quality publishers.
Feedback on the first published version of the checklist can be sent to julkaisufoorumi(at)tsv.fi.
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