How journals work: A systems-based framework for understanding scholarly publishing

Nicoll, LH; LH Nicoll

doi:10.5281/zenodo.18037409

How Journals Work: A Systems-Based Framework for Understanding Scholarly Publishing

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

Writer’s Camp Director

Understanding scholarly journals requires a framework that moves beyond simplified categories to examine how they actually function.

Conversations about scholarly journals are often framed as binaries: predatory versus legitimate, top-tier versus everything else. While these distinctions can be useful at the extremes, they do little to help authors and editors understand how journals function in practice. Most journals do not fit neatly into either category, and treating them as if they do obscures important differences in editorial intent, capacity, infrastructure, and purpose.

Editors know this intuitively. Authors experience it viscerally: through submission systems, peer review processes, revision cycles, and publication timelines that vary widely from one journal to another. Yet we rarely offer shared language to explain why these differences exist or how to interpret them.

To move beyond oversimplified labels, we need to think about journals not as static brands, but as editorial systems. A journal is more than a compilation of articles with a table of contents. Producing an issue or volume requires coordinated work by authors, editors, peer reviewers, copy editors, production teams, and technical personnel, supported by varying levels of resources. More broadly, journals differ in how editorial responsibilities are structured, decisions are made, standards are enforced, and ethical obligations are upheld. The Journal Systems Framework (JSF) offers a way to describe and examine these differences.

Why Prestige and “Quality” Do Not Explain How Journals Function

Prestige, Journal Impact Factor, and publisher names are often used as proxies for journal quality. While these markers can signal visibility or influence, they tell us very little about how a journal operates. Two journals with similar reputations may differ dramatically in governance, peer review rigor, transparency, and editorial workload. Conversely, journals with modest profiles may demonstrate strong ethical practices and thoughtful editorial leadership.

From an author’s perspective, journals are experienced not as reputations, but as systems:

How easy is it to submit?
Who reviews the manuscript?
How long does the process take?
How clear is the feedback?
What happens when problems arise?

These questions point to systems, not status. Understanding journals as systems allows us to distinguish integrity from influence, capacity from intent, and function from prestige.

Introducing the Journal Systems Framework

The Journal Systems Framework (JSF) conceptualizes scholarly journals based on the integrity and functionality of their editorial systems rather than on prestige, impact metrics, or publisher affiliation. It is not a ranking system, an exclusion list, or a judgment of scholarly worth. Instead, it provides a structured way to understand how journals differ in design, resourcing, and purpose.

The JSF recognizes that journals develop under different structural conditions and serve different scholarly roles. By naming these system-level distinctions, the JSF provides shared language for authors, editors, and institutions to have conversations with greater clarity and nuance. These distinctions can be considered across a spectrum shaped by:

ethical intent,
editorial capacity,
infrastructure pathways,
scholarly function.

By understanding these differences, all who interact with journal systems, at whatever level, have a common ground for understanding and discussion.

The Journal Systems Framework Categories

The core of the JSF consists of four categories that describe how journals’ editorial systems are organized and resourced. These categories do not rank journals by quality or prestige; rather, they distinguish legitimate journals based on differences in capacity, infrastructure, governance, and editorial development. The categories are meant to be descriptive rather than judgmental, capturing meaningful differences in how journals operate and what authors can reasonably expect from them.

Predatory or deceptive journals are addressed separately as an intent-based exception, rather than as a category within the framework. Taken together, this distinction provides a practical way to understand the diversity of legitimate journal systems, and to recognize systems that fall outside them, across the scholarly publishing landscape.

Predatory/Deceptive

Predatory/Deceptive journals are defined not by low quality alone, but by intentional misrepresentation. Their systems are designed to mislead authors rather than evaluate scholarship.

Common characteristics include false claims about indexing or impact metrics, nonexistent or implausibly rapid peer review, editorial boards that cannot be verified, and aggressive solicitation unrelated to the journal’s stated scope. In these journals, fees are often emphasized more than editorial processes.

The defining feature of predatory or deceptive journals is deception by design. Their systems cannot be repaired through mentoring or capacity building because they are not built to support scholarship in the first place.

Category A: Capacity-Constrained/Under-Resourced

Category A journals are often misunderstood. These journals typically operate with ethical intent, but their systems are vulnerable due to limited labor, funding, or expertise. Peer review does occur, but in ways shaped by available capacity. Editorial timelines may stretch unpredictably. Policies exist but may be incomplete and maintained under resource constraints.

These journals are not predatory. They are often run by earnest and dedicated individuals who may have limited editorial experience or lack formal training. These individuals may not be supported by a publisher or society with established editorial best practices, workflows, or infrastructure, but they are trying to do their best under constrained circumstances. However, authors may experience variable quality control or limited visibility, and editors may struggle to sustain regular publication schedules.

The core issue in Category A is not integrity, but capacity. For some journals, remaining in Category A reflects contextual realities or deliberate choices rather than a failure of intent, particularly when serving local, regional, or resource-limited scholarly communities.

Category B: Independent, Discipline-Focused

Independent, discipline-focused journals are editor-led and intentionally serve a defined scholarly community. They are characterized by clear scope, transparent peer review (that is, clearly articulated and consistently applied editorial and review processes, not open or non-anonymous review) and related efforts to make editorial processes visible, and active editorial leadership. Their systems may be built incrementally by editors or supported by institutional platforms, but their legitimacy is demonstrated rather than assumed.

These journals often emphasize mentoring, professional development, or stewardship within a discipline. They may publish conceptual, methodological, educational, or practice-focused scholarship that does not fit easily into flagship venues but remains central to the field.

Category B journals play a critical role in scholarly ecosystems by supporting emerging voices, making editorial processes visible, and strengthening disciplinary capacity. Together, these journals often serve as incubators for scholarly voice and editorial skill within a discipline.

Category C: Discipline-Anchored

Discipline-Anchored journals are stable, trusted venues with consistent editorial and production systems. They are often associated with professional societies, academic institutions, or commercial publishers and have clear standing within a discipline.

Peer review processes are reliable, governance structures are established, and publication schedules are predictable. These journals consolidate and extend disciplinary knowledge and provide dependable dissemination to a known audience.

While they may not always be highly selective (but they may be) or internationally influential, Category C journals are foundational to disciplinary scholarship.

Category D: Flagship/High-Impact

Flagship/High-Impact journals are highly resourced, selective, and influential. They often shape disciplinary agendas and norms through their editorial choices. These journals typically have extensive editorial boards, robust production teams, and strong indexing and citation profiles.

Although well-known, often by people outside of the discipline, including consumers, flagship journals represent a small fraction of the overall publishing landscape. Their influence is significant, but their selectivity means they cannot and should not be the sole venues through which scholarship is evaluated or disseminated.

Discoverability Within the Journal Systems Framework

Within the JSF, discoverability is understood as an outcome of editorial system design rather than a defining criterion of journal quality or legitimacy. Different journal categories connect to the scholarly ecosystem through different pathways. Category A journals (Capacity-Constrained/Under-Resourced) often face limited discoverability due to infrastructure and resource constraints. Category B journals (Independent, Discipline-Focused) typically achieve visibility through discipline-appropriate indexing, open-access search, and community-based dissemination. Category C journals (Discipline-Anchored) benefit from publisher- or society-supported metadata pipelines and broader indexing, while Category D journals (Flagship/High-Impact) are deeply integrated into major indexing and distribution systems by default. Importantly, absence from comprehensive biomedical databases such as MEDLINE does not indicate a lack of scholarly value; rather, it reflects differences in journal scope, content type, and system purpose. In this way, discoverability within the JSF is contextual, purpose-aligned, and shaped by how a journal’s editorial system is built and supported.

Rethinking Journal Quality

Journal quality is frequently equated with indicators such as Journal Impact Factor, citation counts, or publisher reputation. While these measures reflect visibility, Journal Impact Factor, specifically, measures how often articles are cited, not how rigorously a journal evaluates, edits, or governs the work it publishes. Impact metrics capture influence, not editorial quality.

From a systems-based perspective, journal quality is not a single metric but an emergent property of how editorial systems function. Quality is reflected in ethical transparency, the rigor and consistency of peer review, clarity of editorial guidance, accountability when problems arise, and alignment between a journal’s stated purpose and its editorial practices. These characteristics are shaped by editorial leadership, governance structures, infrastructure, and available resources, not by citation counts alone.

A journal with modest visibility may demonstrate strong editorial quality through thoughtful peer review, clear standards, and ethical practices, while a highly visible journal may prioritize selectivity and influence over developmental engagement. Understanding journal quality as a systems-level construct allows authors to make more informed publication choices and helps institutions evaluate scholarship based on contribution and context rather than reputation alone. The JSF supports this broader, more accurate understanding of what quality means in scholarly publishing.

Article Processing Fees and Editorial Systems

Article processing fees (APCs) are often treated as another shortcut for judging journal quality, yet fees alone do not distinguish predatory journals from legitimate but under-resourced or independently operated systems. APCs appear across multiple journal systems for different reasons and with very different implications, and their presence should be understood as a funding choice within an editorial system, not as evidence of quality or legitimacy in itself.

In predatory or deceptive systems, fees replace editorial evaluation: payment is exchanged for rapid publication without meaningful peer review or editorial oversight. In contrast, journals that are capacity-constrained or under-resourced may rely on modest fees to support basic operations such as platform hosting, copyediting, or production, even as editors work ethically within limited means. Independent, discipline-focused journals may use APCs transparently to sustain editor-led systems and mentoring-intensive peer review. In highly resourced flagship journals, APCs are part of an open access or hybrid model that coexists with inherited infrastructure and commercial publishing support.

Some open access publishers provide detailed information about how APCs are allocated across editorial management, peer review, production, and dissemination, while many do not. As a result, APCs are often misunderstood as a simple pay-to-publish mechanism rather than as one of several ways journals fund editorial work and long-term access. Open licenses such as CC-BY allow authors to retain copyright while enabling unrestricted access and reuse, but the value of these benefits varies by journal mission, audience, and editorial practice. From a systems perspective, transparency about how fees are used, what editorial work they support, and how decisions are made matters far more than the fee itself. Authors are best served by asking not whether a fee exists, but what the journal’s editorial system delivers in return.

Access Models Within the Journal Systems Framework

Journals operating within the JSF may use a variety of access models, including open access, hybrid, and subscription-based approaches. These models describe how publication costs are covered and how content is made available to readers, but they do not, on their own, indicate editorial rigor, ethical intent, or journal quality. Each access model can be implemented responsibly or irresponsibly across different journal systems. Within the JSF, access model is understood as a structural attribute that intersects with, but does not define, a journal’s editorial system.

Infrastructure Pathways: Why Journals Start in Different Places

One reason journals function so differently is that they acquire their systems through different infrastructure pathways. Some journals launch with provisioned infrastructure, supplied by commercial publishers or professional societies. Submission platforms, peer review systems, archiving, metadata, and indexing support are largely handled externally, not by the editor and the local editorial office.

Others operate with platform-supported infrastructure, where editors lead the journal but rely on institutionally supported systems such as university- or library-hosted platforms (for example, Open Journal Systems [OJS]). In these cases, editorial control is strong, but technical capacity is shaped by institutional resources.

Still others develop editor-built infrastructure, assembling systems incrementally through editor-managed processes. This pathway requires significant labor and intentionality but often results in high transparency and clearly articulated policies.

These pathways represent different starting conditions—not differences in legitimacy. Each can support ethical, rigorous scholarly publishing and knowledge dissemination.

Table 1 illustrates the JSF by comparing key editorial system features across four functional categories, highlighting how differences in capacity, infrastructure, and governance shape how journals operate in practice.

Table 1. Functional Positions Within the Journal Ecosystem (Journal Systems Framework)

Editorial System Feature	Predatory/ Deceptive	Category A Capacity-Constrained/Under-Resourced	Category B Independent, Discipline-Focused	Category C Discipline-Anchored	Category D Flagship/High-Impact
Editorial intent	Revenue generation through deception	Ethical intent, limited by resources	Intentional service to a defined scholarly community	Consolidation and dissemination of disciplinary knowledge	Agenda-setting and field-shaping influence
Editorial & peer review process transparency	Nonexistent, simulated, or implausibly rapid	Present but variable	Transparent, developmental, editor-guided	Reliable and standardized	Highly selective, multi-layered
Editorial leadership & governance	Misrepresented or unverifiable	Editor and board present but capacity-constrained	Editor-led with active editorial board	Established editorial boards and governance structures	Extensive editorial boards with formal governance
Infrastructure pathway	Pay-to-publish shells with minimal systems	Resource-constrained or variably supported	Editor-built or platform-supported	Provisioned or platform-supported	Fully provisioned, often commercial or society-based
Transparency & ethics practices	Opaque, misleading, or absent	Incomplete but actively maintained	Explicit, articulated, and visible	Established and enforced	Formalized, with routine oversight and review mechanisms
Role of article processing fees (if applicable)	Replace editorial evaluation	Support basic editorial and operational functions	Sustain editorial work and mentoring	One component of a broader funding model	One of multiple revenue streams
Author experience	Rapid acceptance, little or no feedback	Variable timelines and feedback shaped by capacity	Mentored, dialogic, editor-engaged	Predictable and professional	Competitive and highly selective
Primary scholarly function	Monetization without scholarly contribution	Sustaining scholarly communication under constraints	Capacity building within a discipline	Foundational knowledge consolidation	Field-shaping influence

Note. The categories shown here represent distinct functional positions within the journal ecosystem, not stages of development or a progression toward a preferred endpoint. Journals may remain in the same category indefinitely based on mission, scope, and editorial intent. Predatory/Deceptive journals are shown as an intent-based exception and is not part of the A–D framework.

Published under CC BY-ND 4.0 by the Writer’s Camp Journal. May be reused, but no modifications permitted. Must include the whole table, this note, and statement.

Why the Journal Systems Framework Matters

For Authors

The JSF helps authors make informed choices about where to submit their work. Rather than chasing prestige or avoiding journals out of fear, authors should first consider whether a journal’s scope aligns with their work, and then match the purpose of their article to the type of journal system best suited to support it. This approach encourages authors to think intentionally about audience, scope, and editorial expectations, and to recognize that rigor and quality are not determined by reputation alone. By understanding how different journal systems operate, authors can make submission decisions that align with their goals and values, reducing frustration and increasing the likelihood of a productive editorial experience.

For Editors

The framework provides shared language for explaining constraints, defending developmental editorial work, and articulating editorial intent. It makes invisible labor visible by naming the people, processes, and resources required to sustain rigorous peer review and publication. For editors, the JSF supports more transparent communication with authors, reviewers, and stakeholders, particularly when managing expectations around turnaround time, scope, and capacity. It also offers a way for editors to situate their journal honestly within the broader publishing ecosystem without apology or overclaiming.

For Institutions

The JSF offers a more nuanced way to evaluate scholarly output. It encourages assessment based on contribution, context, and disciplinary relevance rather than journal branding alone. For institutions, this perspective supports fairer mentoring, promotion, and evaluation practices by recognizing the diversity of legitimate journal systems and the varied forms of scholarly labor they represent. By shifting attention from prestige signals to editorial systems and scholarly purpose, institutions can better align evaluation practices with stated commitments to equity, rigor, and meaningful impact.

Conclusion

The Journal Systems Framework does not replace existing guidance about predatory publishing or journal selection; instead, it refines it. By understanding journals as systems, shaped by editorial intent, capacity, infrastructure pathways, and scholarly purpose, we can move beyond simplistic binaries and toward more honest conversations about scholarly publishing.

A systems-based perspective helps authors make intentional publication choices, supports editors in explaining and strengthening their practices, and encourages institutions to evaluate scholarship in context rather than by reputation alone. When journals are understood not merely as brands, but as working systems, space opens for ethical innovation, editorial development, and more inclusive scholarly ecosystems.

I welcome comments and discussion on the JSF.

Author: Leslie H. Nicoll

Reviewed by: Peggy L. Chinn, Sally Thorne, Roger Watson, Lisa Marshall

Reviewed and Edited by: Marilyn Oermann and Jenny Chicca

Citation: Nicoll, LH. How journals work: A systems-based framework for understanding scholarly publishing. The Writer’s Camp Journal, 2026; 2(1):4. doi:10.5281/zenodo.18037409

AI Use Disclosure: Artificial intelligence tools were used for brainstorming and early drafting of the article. The author retains full responsibility for the content. The framework and interpretations reflect the author’s expertise and judgment.