Journal Due Diligence Part II: Special Considerations

By Leslie H. Nicoll, PhD, MBA, RN, FAAN

Writer’s Camp Director

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Journal evaluation requires more than just a cursory review.

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Journal due diligence (JDD), as I have described it, is a straightforward process. Still, there are gray areas you need to be aware of—things I consider to be “special cases,” including predatory journals and journals that belong to a society or association. I’ll discuss those here and close with a few thoughts on journal impact factor and style.

Predatory Journals

In my prior article¹ I mentioned that you should become familiar with publishers’ names. In nursing, the major journal publishers are Wolters Kluwer, Elsevier, Wiley, and Sage, with smaller companies such as Slack and Janetti being part of the mix. You may also come across universities as publishers or small companies, such as mine (Maine Desk LLC) with one publication (The Writer’s Camp Journal). Looking up a publisher with a name unfamiliar to you should be part of your vetting process. What if you come across journals published by the OMICS group, iMedPub, or Dove Press? These are some major predatory publishers. Should you consider their journals as possible places to submit your manuscript?

The short answer is, No. The longer answer is a little more complicated.

Publishing Models

There are 3 basic models in journal publishing: traditional, hybrid, and open access. Open access has different types, named after colors (gold, silver, green), but for the moment, I am going to consider just the gold open access model and call it generically “open access.”

In the traditional model, articles are published in journals that are available by subscription. Subscribers may be individuals or institutions, primarily libraries. If you belong to a society or association that has a journal, you may receive a subscription as a member benefit. When you publish in a traditional journal, there is no fee to you for submission, the peer review process, editing, or publishing. Journal revenues come primarily from subscriptions and advertising.

Open access journals are designed to be freely available to all interested readers. The first, largest, and most famous in health and medicine is PLOS ONE, founded in 2006 and published by the Public Library of Science. The PLOS journals, as well as other legitimate open access journals, follow accepted standards of scientific publishing including peer review and adherence to ethical guidelines. Revenue for open access journals comes from article processing charges (APCs) that can range from several hundred to several thousand dollars. These fees are the responsibility of authors (the author pays the journal to publish their article) or their institution might pay the open access fee. If you select a legitimate open access journal without doing your JDD, you might have a nasty surprise when you receive an invoice for an APC or publishing fee.

The hybrid model is a recent development, spurred in part by open access publishing. In this case, a traditional journal offers an open access model with an APC. Authors are usually given the choice to publish open access after their article has been accepted and is moving into production. The hybrid APC is comparable to the APCs of open access journals in terms of amount. My journal, CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing, has a hybrid option for authors. You can tell which articles are published open access by looking at the table of contents. Open access articles have an open lock next to their title.

Gold Open Access Run Amok

Predatory journals have been described as “gold open access run amok.” Predatory publishers make their money on APCs for publishing large numbers of journals and articles within those journals. The journals are described as being “author-centric” rather than “reader-centric.” Predatory publishers use various tactics to lure in unsuspecting authors with “spammy” emails, claims of fast peer review, and publishing articles within days, rather than weeks or months. They list false metrics on their journal websites. Editor names and editorial board members are often purloined from institutional websites—many times a person does not even know they are listed on the masthead of a predatory journal. Content may be plagiarized, references may be falsified, and peer review is poorly executed or absent completely. In the absence of peer review, articles that lack scientific evidence or espouse a particular point of view may be published and then quoted, moving fringe science and/or beliefs into the mainstream. In an era of fake news, fabricated facts, and questioning of the accuracy of the scientific method, predatory journals and the articles published therein constitute a real threat to the infrastructure on which scientific knowledge rests.

If you are in the mood to go down a very deep rabbit hole, start reading about predatory publishers and some of their antics over the past two decades. It is quite eye opening. But for the purpose of JDD, I have a short answer for you: stay away from predatory journals. Do not use them to publish your manuscript and do not cite them in the articles you write. If a journal is unfamiliar to you, then do your homework to find out if it is a legitimate journal. Keep in mind that the Directory of Nursing Journals is vetted by a team of experts, so it does not contain any predatory journals. But if you go beyond our nursing discipline to consider journals, then you don’t have the Directory as a guide to help you. The Think.Check.Submit²website can be useful as it has a checklist with several items for you to consider when evaluating a journal. If you are still unsure, ask a colleague or ask me! Whatever you do, don’t get tripped up and submit your hard work to a predatory journal.

Association and Society Journals

As a professional nurse with a particular specialty and expertise, you may very well belong to an association or society, which in turn publishes a journal, which you may consider as a place to publish your work. This is very logical thinking and a good idea. However, don’t assume that because you are a member, you will get preferential treatment, speedy peer review, or expedited publishing. While this would be nice, it doesn’t work that way.

The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) promotes high standards and transparency in scientific publishing processes. Most large publishers, such as the ones mentioned earlier, are members of COPE, and this membership transfers to their journals. By virtue of this membership, the editor adheres to COPE standards in all aspects of the work required to produce their journal. In practical terms, this means that all authors are treated the same way from submission through acceptance (or rejection) and ultimately publication. Thus, if you are a society member, this is not a factor in the editor’s thinking. For peer review, the reviewers will not even know because author information is anonymized.

I was the editor of an association journal (Journal of Hospice and Palliative Nursing [JHPN] for the Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association) for almost 10 years. Authors would send in photocopies of their membership cards and describe their involvement in HPNA. I didn’t ask for this information anywhere, but many authors persisted. To be frank, they were wasting their time pulling this information together to submit.

One area where I did show a bit of favoritism to member authors was recognizing that HPNA was made up primarily of clinicians who did not have a lot of experience in writing for publication. Knowing that I was dealing with novice authors, I provided more detail and guidance to them than was my usual style, particularly in “revise and resubmit” letters. The author had to have a good idea in the first place, but it was often like finding a diamond in the rough—the manuscript needed quite a bit of work to get down to the diamond. For me, this was a very different approach than I took with my other journal, CIN. While CIN authors were also frequently clinicians, they tended to have more education and experience with writing for publication and didn’t need as much help, as a general rule.

I say all this so that you can think through where you might fit in with your society or association journal. The editor will be happy to receive your manuscript as they support the society’s publication. But beyond that initial reaction, everything else in the manuscript process will be treated anonymously, just as it would be for any author.

One final note: if you are at a conference and present a poster or paper, and an editor comes up, hands you a business card, and tells you “Good job—send this to me!” or something similar—be flattered but don’t expect more. This is an example of the editor doing their job: drumming up manuscripts. Don’t take it as a sign that they will select your manuscript for special processing or something else. The editor may very well forget they even talked to you! If the journal is a good fit, then go ahead and select it. But don’t delude yourself that you are on the fast track to acceptance—you aren’t.

I had a situation a few years ago where I met several people who had all presented at the same society conference. The journal editor was there and was going up to all the presenters (podium and poster) and asking for the “right of first refusal” for their journal. The presenters asked me if they were obligated to submit to that journal. My answer was no. In the first place, how would the editor even know if the author had submitted somewhere else? Second, if the journal wasn’t the best fit, why should they use precious time submitting if the outcome did not look good? As it turned out, several authors did submit to the society journal (because they thought this was required), and their manuscripts ended up being quickly rejected.  This was a good learning moment for all of us and reinforced what I routinely say: society and association editors are just ordinary editors like the rest of us and will treat your manuscript the same as any other.

Journal Impact Factor and Journal Style

Two other issues that surface when evaluating journals are Journal Impact Factor (JIF) and journal style, ie, APA (American Psychological Association) or AMA (American Medical Association) for citations and references. While both of these may be things to consider, they should not be deciding points in your JDD.

Journal Impact Factor

The JIF is controversial. It was originally developed by Garfield as the average number of citations to articles published in a journal over a specific period of time.^3–5 He intended it to be used by librarians to select journals for subscriptions at their institutions. The intent was to help librarians make best use of limited funds. Over the years, the JIF has morphed into a measure of quality. Many authors mistakenly believe that publishing in a journal with a JIF is required or a mark of prestige. It is not.

In nursing, there are 116 journals with a JIF. There are 250+ journals in the Directory of Nursing Journals, which means approximately 46% of the listed journals have a JIF. Does that mean the non-JIF journals they are somehow “less good” than their JIF counterparts? Not at all. In fact, in 1983, only 9 journals in nursing had a JIF. That number slowly increased to 36 where it sat for many years. In 2004, the International Academy of Nursing Editors (INANE) took a leadership role in lobbying for increased coverage of nursing journals in the journal citation reports database. That effort paid off and now there are 116. Yahoo!

I am going to be completely honest—when I was the Editor of JHPN, I did the work to have the journal be evaluated and selected for a JIF. Let me tell you: the process was a joke. I followed the instructions to the letter, mailing in paper copies of the journal as it was published, every issue accompanied by a letter (on letterhead) stating my request. This dragged on for almost 5 years. Just as I was wrapping up my editorship with JHPN, we received word that the journal had been approved for a JIF. Okay, that’s a success. But, this experience left me disillusioned about JIFs. Now, granted, I am just one editor and maybe my experience was an anomaly, but somehow, I don’t think so. All this is to say—take the JIF with a grain of salt and don’t use it as a deciding factor in your journal selection.

Journal Style

Finally—journal style: AMA, APA, or something else. APA is common in nursing journals and is the style manual preferred by schools and colleges of nursing. Many learners graduate believing that they “know” APA inside and out. Because of this knowledge, they are reluctant to select journals that use AMA style and cross them off their JDD list. “Oh, pshaw!” I say. That is like saying you won’t buy a suit because the skirt is too long. Things can be fixed and converting from APA to AMA (or Vancouver, or something else) is fixable. A reference manager, such as Endnote, Zotero, or Paperpile, will do the job for you. I have also heard a rumor that AI will convert citations and references although I haven’t tested that myself. The point is, journal style is just hygiene and easily addressed. Don’t let style be a barrier to putting a journal on your JDD list.

Conclusion

Selecting a journal for your article is tremendously important. My process for evaluation, JDD, begins with a wide open field for consideration; any journal is a potential publication choice. Initially, you should create a list based on fit, which should include the type of article, its focus, and specialty within nursing. An association or society journal may be an excellent choice, particularly if you are a member, but manuscript acceptance will not be expedited or automatic. As you continue to narrow down your choices, you want to make sure that you don’t inadvertently select a predatory journal. Finally, don’t worry about journal style as that is fixable issue and should not be perceived as a barrier to journal selection.

Next up: journal selectors. Are they the computerized resource that makes traditional JDD obsolete? Stay tuned to find out!

References

1.      Nicoll LH. Manuscript Success: Journal Due Diligence. The Writer’s Camp Journal. 2025;1(1):10. doi:10.5281/ZENODO.15570045

2.      Identify trusted publishers for your research. Think. Check. Submit. January 31, 2018. Accessed June 8, 2025. https://thinkchecksubmit.org/

3.      Garfield E. The History and Meaning of the Journal Impact Factor. JAMA. 2006;295:90-93. doi:10.1001/jama.295.1.90

4.      Garfield E. Citation indexes for science; a new dimension in documentation through association of ideas. Science. 1955;122(3159):108-111. doi:10.1126/science.122.3159.108

5.      Garfield E. The evolution of the Science Citation Index. Int Microbiol. 2007;10(1):65-69. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17407063

Author: Leslie H. Nicoll

Editor: Marilyn Oermann

© 2025 Writer’s Campl and Leslie H. Nicoll. CC-BY-ND 4.0

Citation: Nicoll LH. Manuscript Success: Journal Due Diligence Part II, Special Considerations. The Writer’s Camp Journal, 2025;1(1):12. doi:10.5281/zenodo.15620094