Is it ok to publish in a paid research journal?

It is acceptable to publish in paid research journals. However, the paid journals you have selected for your publication must be reputed/peer-reviewed. Many predatory journals on the internet dupe researchers. These fake journals have no peer-reviewed policy and publish any random research papers. Therefore, it is important to check the reputation of a paid journal before submitting your work. In this blog post, we will discuss all the perspectives related to publication in paid research journals.

We will cover the following points:

• Paid vs Free publication research journals.
• Open Access vs Non-Open Access Journals.
• Publication in paid research journals.
• How to find research journals (paid/ free journals)?
• How to avoid publishing in predatory journals?
• Benefits of Publishing in Paid Journals.

Paid vs Free Publication Research Journals

Paid research journals ask researchers to pay APC for publication while a free publication journal doesn’t charge authors any publication fees for the publication of their work.

Free Publishing journals are considered more reputed journals than paid research journals. However, free publishing journals have longer publication times than paid research journals. The reason for that is that free publishing journals receive more research papers to review and they have limited resources.

Both paid and free publishing research journals can be reputable.

Open Access vs Non-Open Access Journals

Open Access Journals make the research freely available to download and read while a non-open access journal asks readers to pay a fee or have a subscription to read the articles.

Generally, Open Access Journals ask researchers to pay APC for publication and make the research freely available to read for readers. Similarly, a non-open-access journal may publish research papers without publication fees and ask readers to pay a fee or have a subscription to read the articles.

Publication in paid research journals

Publication in paid research journals is normal if the journal is legitimate but it is also important to know the publication fee. Paid research journals have more resources in terms of reviewers, publication assistance, online platforms, etc; So they can publish your research in a fast manner.

However, many paid journals prioritize money over the quality of research. So it is advised to check the ranking of the journals. In the ranking, check the indexing, impact factor, SJR, CiteScore, and other journal metrics.

Journal quality indicators to determine the quality of a journal

How to find suitable research journals (paid & free publishing journals)?

Finding suitable research journals is an art. It can be time-consuming if you don’t know much about research journals. Many journal finder tools make this task easy. Below are the free and useful journal finder tools. All these tools are helpful to find free as well as paid publishing journals.

• PhDTalks Journal Finder
• Journal Searches
• Elsevier Journal Finder
• Springer Journal Suggester
• Scopus official Website
• Web of Science Website
• UGC CARE Journal Official Website

How to avoid publishing in paid predatory journals?

As we have discussed earlier in this post many paid journals are predatory. They just charge researchers a huge amount and publish the research without publication protocols.

So it is very important to check the reputation of journals. For that, you can check the journal indexing, journal ranking, etc. In indexing, Scopus, Web of Science, UGC CARE, DOAJ journals are considered good. Many fake journals claim false indexing. Visit www.journalsearches.com to know the indexing/ ranking of any journal.

Benefits of Publishing in Paid Journals

1. Paid journals have more resources in comparison to free publishing journals. So a paid journal can review and publish research papers quickly.
2. Generally, paid research journals are open-access. Publishing in open-access journals provides wider publicity for research.
3. Paid journals often provide publication assistance such as language editing, and paper formatting.
4. Paid journals also promote research widely on various social platforms. Authors have chances of maximum citations.