About

Objective and Inclusion Criteria

To fight back against predatory publishing, some caring people created blacklists of journals, conferences and publishers.

GAJET List takes the opposite direction by creating a list of good academic journals to fight back against not only predatory publishing but also abusive practices by commercial academic publishers who earn money from free labor (authors, peer-reviewers, and editors). Subscription-based publishers sell the result of free labour and open access publishers not only use the free labour but also ask the authors to pay! We consider it not only a form of modern slavery and abuse but also a form of financial discrimination against early career researchers and those from low- and middle-income backgrounds (regardless of country) who not only cannot afford the payments but also cannot access the published materials because of unaffordability. Financial interests must be taken out of science publishing. Such interests have created thousands of predators, and the only way to fight back is by promoting GAJETs. Diamond Open Access (no fee for publishing or reading) is the way to the open future.

The Libraries across the globe – funded by their host institute – spend billions of dollars every year to pay subscription fees to the publishers. Billions more are spent by the authors, their institutes, or funders on paying Article Processing Charges (APC) to the open access publishers. Such money must be spent on research and practice of preventing, diagnosing, and treating healthcare conditions. The publishers claim that publishing is costly and such payment is required. We disagree with this out-of-date model by introducing alternative successful community-based journals and publishing models employing volunteers and financial support from scientific societies, institutes and governments as a much cheaper alternative. Such alternatives have survived for decades. In addition, preprint servers are perfect platforms for free-of-charge publishing. They also include a feedback and commenting feature that can be used for peer-review comments.

The Universities are partners in crime by promoting the “publish or perish” slogan, H-Index, and Impact Factor. Impact and change cannot be measured by these criteria.

The Funders are partners in crime if they accept Article Processing Charges (APC) for open access publishing as part of the funding application. Open access publishing is possible without paying the publishers.

This list will prioritise medical and healthcare journals since these sciences are directly dealing with human life and lack of access to medical research can be costly both in terms of lives lost and financially. In addition, we have limited resources to assess all the journals, and we think our selected sciences are the first priority. However, with help from the community, we will prioritise Veterinary Medicine and Environmental Sciences next before providing the list for other sciences.

The list includes the journals that meet all the following criteria:

Indexed in MEDLINE: Many predatory journals are using visibility in PubMed to convince the researchers about the quality. Since most researchers are not aware of the differences between MEDLINE and PubMed, they get into the trap. We decided to use MEDLINE-indexing as a criterion to avoid confusion and ask the researchers to ignore the visibility in PubMed and focus on journals that the NLM Catalog lists as “Currently Indexed in MEDLINE“.
Free for Authors: They do not charge the authors, or authors’ institutes for anything, including Subscription, Article Processing Charge (APC) or Open Access Fee. It is unethical to prioritise those scientists who have money/funding over those who don’t have money to share their science, regardless of their country of residence. Even many researchers in high-income countries cannot afford to pay, and they are being discriminated against because they are living in a high-income country. Funders should not support APC as part of funding application; that money is better spent on research. APC blocks progress in science.
Free for Readers: They do not put the papers behind a paywall, login, or advertisement so the readers can access and read the papers for free (without payment, seeing advertisements, or login requirements). It is unethical to put life-saving science behind the paywall so patients and clinical practitioners cannot access it. Paywall kills.
Alternative Sources of Financial Support: Since the journal is not earning money from the authors or readers, they seek support from alternative sources such as asking volunteers to help and get credit for their help, receiving funding from membership fees paid to the societies or associations, donations, or unconditional support from organisations, universities, or governments (funding public universities) with clear mention of the source of support. It is important that such support should be credited but should not come with strings attached. It is unethical to punish those who have dedicated their time for free to publish science with APC fines; it is also unethical to make patients, clinicians, institutes, or funders who fund science pay for publishing. Journals must be funded using other resources. Research money must be invested in research, not paying publishers. Published and Punished is as wrong as Publish or Perish.
Peer-Reviewed: They are following one of the peer-review models for their research and review articles. We encourage Open Peer-Review models so the readers can judge the quality of the peer-review. While peer-review does not guarantee quality, in many cases, it helps improve quality. We recommend open peer-review to fight against malpractice behind the scenes.
English as One of the Accepted Languages: Since English is the language of science, the journal accepts manuscripts in English. They may accept manuscripts in other languages as well, but English must be among the acceptable languages even if the journal accepts only one English manuscript per year. It is unethical to reject English manuscripts because it is the dominant science language in the world.
[Encouraged] Accepts Preprint Publications: Depositing the manuscript to preprint servers makes it available to the users and readers immediately and increases visibility and transparency, solving the problem of delays in the peer-review process. Journals must welcome manuscripts that are available on preprint servers. It is unethical to reject a manuscript from a journal because the manuscript has been deposited to a preprint server.
[Encouraged] Mandates Methods and Data Sharing on Open Science Platforms: Shared data have many advantages for progress in science and enhancing the reproducibility of results. The methods and data should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR).
[Encouraged] Assigns Digital Object Identifier (DOI) to Articles: DOI makes articles Finable and Citable.
[Encouraged] Follows Established Guidelines on Medical Ethics, Reporting, Publication Ethics, Authorship, Conflict of Interest, and Versioning.
[Encouraged] Publishing Full Text Papers in Structured HTML Format. HTML is a web-based and platform-agnostic, accessible, indexable, and readable format. PDF imprisons the data and makes science inaccessible, platform-dependent, non-re-usable, non-findable, non-interoperable, non-editable, password-protected, advertisement-prone, and, in some cases, non-copyable.

The future is open.