Consider several factors when evaluating a potential journal: Acceptance rates, affiliation, circulation rates, indexing, metrics, peer-review.
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What is an Acceptance Rate?
Acceptance rate (or rejection rate) is the ratio of the number of articles submitted to the number of articles published. Although acceptance rates are used to measure selectivity or prestige, they are, however, only one factor of many to consider. There are two ways to measure acceptance rates--Elsevier's article discusses this.
How Does One Find Them?
Generally, the best way to locate information on acceptance rates is to visit the journal website and check the author guidelines section. Also consider a search for the publisher's acceptance rate.
Another option is to contact the journal editor directly. If the editor won't supply the acceptance rate, ask how many submissions the journal receives a year. Calculate the rejection rate by dividing the number of articles published in that year by the number received. For example, a journal that receives fifty submissions annually and publishes only ten, has a rejection rate of 80 percent (returning 4 out of every 5 submissions), or an acceptance rate of 20%.
Additional resources for locating acceptance rates:
What is the Circulation Rate?
Circulation rates tell one how many copies of the publication are distributed.
Where May I Find Circulation Rates?
Ulrich's Periodical DirectoryWhere is the Journal Indexed?
Make sure the journal is indexed in a database, otherwise it will be difficult for others to find your article.
Be wary, too, of disreputable publishers who may falsely claim their journal is indexed in a particular database or with a particular vendor.
Always double check a publisher's claims. 
If the publisher tells you that a vendor (EBSCO or ProQuest, for example) indexes the journal--be leery. Vendors like EBSCO and ProQuest produce many different databases; the publisher should provide you with a specific database name.
Find indexing information for your journal in The Serials Directory.
Where May I Find Journal Indexing Information?
Not enough time to track down this information? Contact an LVC Librarian. We'll be happy to find where the journal is indexed.
What are Journal Metrics?
Metrics measure the quality and impact of a journal, illuminating citation trends and patterns within journals and their subject fields. Journal metrics help one to:
Where May I Find Journal Metrics?
What Do These Metrics Measure?
| Article Influence | Measures how impactful the average article is within a journal. Calculated by using the Eigenfactor score divided by the number of articles published in journal. |
| CiteScore | The number of citations made in the current year to articles in the previous three years of the journal, divided by the total number of articles in the previous 3 years of the journal. CiteScore includes all sources and document types |
| Eigenfactor | Scores the importance of a journal; said to be more robust than the impact factor. Similar to the 5-Year Journal Impact Factor except that it weeds out self-citations. Covers both the hard sciences and the social sciences. |
| 5 Year Journal Impact Factor | Shows how often the journal has been cited in the most recent five years. Calculated by the number of citations to articles from the most recent five full years, divided by the total number of articles from the most recent five full years. |
| h Index | Accounts for quantity (number of articles) and quality (defined as number of citations). A journal's h-index is the number of articles in a journal [h] that have received at least [h] citations over a citation period. |
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IPP |
Impact per Publication. Also known as RIP (raw impact per publication), the IPP is number of current-year citations to papers from the previous three years, divided by the total number of papers in those three previous years. |
| Journal Cited Half Life |
For the current Journal Citation Reports year, the median age of journal articles cited. |
| Journal Immediacy Index | Shows how often the journal is cited during the current year. Calculated by the number of citations to articles from the current year, divided by the total number of articles from the current year. |
| Journal Impact Factor | Shows how highly cited the average article in a journal is relative to others in its discipline. Calculated by the number of citations made in the current year to articles in the previous two years, divided by the total number of citable articles from the previous two years. |
| Normalized Eigenfactor | Turns the Eigenfactor into a multiplier. A score of two is twice as good as a score of one; a score of twenty is four times as good as a score of five. |
| SCImago Journal Rank | Accounts for the number of citations received by a journal and the importance or prestige of the journal where the citations come from. This is a ratio of the average number of weighted citations received in a year over the number of documents published in the journal in the previous three years. |
| SJR | This metric doesn't consider all citations of equal weight; it takes into account the prestige of the citing journal. |
| SNIP | If there are fewer total citations in a research field, then citations are worth more in that field: Source Normalized Impact per Paper weights citations based on the number of citations in a field. |
Beware. Fake Metrics.
There are many fake impact factors and bogus metrics. Before you reply upon a metric, make sure it's valid.
Fake metrics and how to spot them.
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What is Peer-Reviewed?
Peer review is a process where scholars or scientists (“peers”) evaluate the quality of other scholar's work before it is published in a journal. The peer review process--also called refereed--ensures rigor, novelty, correctness and consistency; it is one of the gold standards of science.
The Serials Directory will tell you whether or not it is peer-reviewed. Or you can ask a librarian. We're always happy to help.
Seven Common Types of Peer-Review
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