Evaluating Quality of Publications and Conferences

While it is important to evaluate publications independently using criteria such as described under Evaluating Journals and Principles of Transparency and Best Practices, the following sources do some vetting of their lists of journals and publications.  If a publication is included in any of these sources, that is a point in favor of the publication's reliability, but it is not recommended to rely solely on any "blacklists" or "whitelists" to determine journal quality.

University of Toronto Guide to Deceptive Publishers offers this helpful information:

"Deceptive publishers may falsely represent their affiliations. It is best to verify stated affiliations via the website of the organization a journal claims to be affiliated with. The following are some recognized organizations:

• AJOL (African Journals Online)
• COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics)
• DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals)
• ICMJE (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors)
• INASP (International Network for Availability of Scientific Publications for journals published in Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Central America and Mongolia)
• OASPA (Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association)
• WAME (World Association of Medical Editors)
 

Journals included in these sources are vetted for quality at least to some extent, as described in the selection criteria of each source.  This list of databases is not intended to be comprehensive.