For many years, Cabell’s Directory of Publishing Opportunities has been one of the top tools for researchers to identify journals and publishers to showcase their work. Its Whitelist provides a wealth of information on each journal, allowing potential authors to evaluate the journal’s acceptance rates, peer-review process, length of review, time to publication, impact, and more, in order to make the best decisions about where to publish their work.

However, as the scholarly publishing landscape expands, so too have the number of potentially predatory or questionable publishers. To help Chapman authors make informed decisions about where to submit their research, the Leatherby Libraries have acquired access to Cabell’s Blacklist as well. The Blacklist identifies potentially problematic journals and publishers by pointing out warning signs, such as lack of or falsified editorial boards, surprise publication fees, unusually quick peer-review or time to publication, falsified metrics, fake mailing addresses, and more. Authors can then use this information to make informed decisions about where to publish their work.

Both the whitelist and the blacklist are available through the same interface, and both can be filtered by discipline, metrics, peer review, open access, acceptance rate, and more. Chapman faculty, students, and staff can access Cabell’s in several ways:

  1. From the library’s website, by selecting Cabell’s from the Database A-Z list (or by going to https://chapman.libguides.com/cabell directly)
  2. Via the “Evaluate OA Publishers and Journals” tab on the Open Access research guide (although Cabell’s covers non-open access publishers as well)
  3. Via the Find a Place to Get Published guide

Authors may also contact the Scholarly Communications librarian, Kristin Laughtin-Dunker, at laughtin@chapman.edu with any questions related to identifying journals, getting appropriate metrics, or other questions related to their publishing endeavors.