| name | rt-venue-integrity |
| description | Use before submitting to a venue this repository does not cover, one that arrived by email solicitation, or one whose indexing status matters for a tenure or degree requirement. Runs a source-by-source verification protocol — indexing, publisher, editorial board, fees, retraction history — and reports what each primary source says. It never labels a journal; it reports checks. |
Venue Integrity Check (rt-venue-integrity)
The 743 venues in
shared-resources/journal-selection/venue-index.tsv
were each curated into this repository from their own published guidance, so a venue
being in the index is at least evidence that someone looked. The moment an author steps
outside it — and
journal-match.md's
coverage-honesty rule requires saying so rather than forcing a poor fit — this
repository has nothing to offer, and that is exactly the moment the risk appears: a
solicitation email, a plausible-looking title, an APC, and a paper that becomes
uncitable and cannot be resubmitted elsewhere.
This is the check to run before that submission.
First: is it actually outside the index?
python3 tools/match_venues.py --title "<the venue's name>" --top 5
grep -i "<name fragment>" shared-resources/journal-selection/venue-index.tsv
Venues appear under several names, and a Chinese journal's English title or an
acronym's expansion often looks unfamiliar when the venue is in fact covered in depth.
If it is in the index, stop — the pack answers the question better than this checklist
does, and the checks below are for venues nobody here has vetted.
When to trigger
- The target venue is not in
venue-index.tsv and not in a breadth bundle.
- The invitation arrived unsolicited, by email, praising the author's "esteemed work".
- A degree, tenure or funding rule requires a specific index (SSCI / SCIE / Scopus /
CSSCI / 北大核心), and the venue's claim to it has not been verified.
- The venue's name closely resembles a well-known journal's.
- An APC is quoted and the author is deciding whether to pay it.
The protocol
Verify each item against the source named, at the time of asking. Record the source
and the date. A claim on the journal's own website is not verification of that claim.
| Check | Verify against | A finding worth stopping for |
|---|
| Indexing claim (SSCI/SCIE/ESCI) | Clarivate Master Journal List search | listed nowhere, or listed only in ESCI while the site claims SCIE |
| Indexing claim (Scopus) | Elsevier Scopus source list (title + ISSN) | absent, or marked discontinued |
| Open-access legitimacy | DOAJ entry | absent, or removed |
| Chinese index claim | the current CSSCI / 北大核心 catalogue for the stated period | claimed for a period it was not listed |
| Delisting history | the index's own discontinued-titles list | delisted, and when |
| ISSN and title | the ISSN Portal | ISSN belongs to a different title |
| Publisher identity | publisher's site, membership of COPE / OASPA / STM | no traceable publisher, or a membership that cannot be confirmed |
| Editorial board | spot-check three named editors at their stated institutions | editors who do not list the role, or cannot be found |
| Fees | the journal's own author guidelines | fee disclosed only after acceptance |
| Peer review | the stated policy, and the promised timeline | review promised in days; "guaranteed" acceptance |
| Retractions | Retraction Watch database, PubPeer for the field | a pattern, not a single retraction |
Five to ten minutes of checking; the failure it prevents is measured in years.
What this skill will not do
It ships no list of predatory journals and applies no label. Those lists are
contested, go stale, and calling a named journal predatory is a factual claim about a
real publisher that this repository is not in a position to make. The output is a table
of checks, each with a source and a date, and the author draws the conclusion.
Report a check as verified, failed, or could not verify — and treat "could
not verify" as its own answer, not as a soft pass.
Output format
【Venue】name · publisher · ISSN
【Checks】
indexing (SSCI) verified / failed / could not verify — source, date
indexing (Scopus) …
publisher …
editorial board …
fees …
retractions …
【Unresolved】what could not be verified, and what would resolve it
【What this means for the requirement】whether the degree/tenure index rule is met
【Author's decision】stated as a decision for the author, with the risks named
Hard rules
- Name the source and the date for every check. An unsourced check is not a check.
- Never assert that a journal is predatory, fraudulent or fake. Report what each
primary source says or does not say.
- "Could not verify" is a finding, and for an unfamiliar venue asking for money it
is a serious one. Do not round it up to "probably fine".
- An indexing requirement is checked against the index, not the journal. A journal's
own claim to be indexed is the thing under test.
- If the venue is in
venue-index.tsv, this skill is not needed — say so and hand
back to rt-journal-match.
Anti-patterns
- Judging a journal by its APC. Many reputable open-access journals charge; many
predatory ones are cheap.
- Treating an unfamiliar name as suspect. Small national and specialist journals are
legitimate and often the right home for a paper.
- Running the check after submission. Withdrawal is not always possible, and
simultaneous submission is misconduct.
The escape hatch for rt-journal-match's coverage-honesty rule: when the right venue is
outside the index, this is what to do instead of forcing a fit. Part of
Research-Toolkit-Skills.
