Journal Verification: Is This Journal Valid?

JMVRA — Journal of Modern and Versatile Research Approach

Start with the ISSN. Open the ISSN Portal record for 2984-8911. The registered title should read “Journal of Modern and Versatile Research Approach”, the medium should be online, and the URL should point to jmvra.org. If any of those three disagree with the website you are on, stop: that is the classic sign of a cloned journal.

Then check the publishing record. JMVRA was established in June 2023 and publishes monthly. Open the current issue and the archive: a genuine monthly journal shows issues in sequence, each with real articles you can open and read in full. Gaps, empty issues or articles that cannot be downloaded are warning signs for any journal.

Read the charges before you submit. The fee is ₹971 INR for Indian authors and $41 USD for foreign authors, payable only after acceptance, with an optional Crossref DOI add-on of ₹300 INR or $20 USD. If anyone asks you for money before a decision on your paper, that request did not come from the journal’s published process.

Read the impact claim carefully. JMVRA’s impact factor is 11.25. It is a calculated metric based on citations from Google Scholar and Semantic Scholar, and it is not an official Clarivate Journal Impact Factor (JCR). A journal that states the basis of its metric is easier to assess than one that prints a number with no source. Verified citation counts and h-index figures are shown as pending verification until confirmed.

Check its visibility at the source. Look the journal up on its Google Scholar profile, Academia, Scholar9 and ORWave. You can also run discovery searches on Crossref Search, OpenAlex and Google Search — these open a results page and are discovery links, not proof of indexing.

Finally, the UGC position. JMVRA is a Transparent, Peer-Reviewed, Open Access Journal (Refereed Journal). Following the discontinuation of the UGC and UGC-CARE journal listing, and in alignment with the latest UGC-CARE recommendations and guidelines, JMVRA is aligned with UGC’s Suggested Parameters for Choosing Peer-Reviewed Journals. UGC journal numbers belonged to the approved list that ended before 2019; JMVRA, founded in 2023, has no such number and should not be shown with one.

TIJER — International Research Journal

TIJER (ISSN 2349-9249) has published monthly since 2014 and its own website is tijer.org. Begin, as always, with the ISSN Portal record and confirm that the registered title and website match. Then open recent issues on tijer.org and read two or three articles in your own field: the quality of what a journal has already published is the best guide to how your paper will be treated.

TIJER describes itself as a “UGC CARE Approved, Transparent Peer-Reviewed (Refereed) Journal as per new UGC Notification” and lists “Multidisciplinary, Monthly, Crossref DOI, Indexing in all major database & Metadata”. It is shown here as a High Impact Factor journal. Its charge is a low cost ₹970 INR for Indian authors and $50 USD for international authors. Submission, journal view and archive buttons for TIJER on this site all lead to researchwave.org.

JNRID — Journal of Novel Research and Innovative Development

JNRID (ISSN 2984-8687) was established in 2023 and its website is jnrid.org. Check the ISSN Portal record first, then the journal’s published issues, editorial board and review policy. Because JNRID’s focus is novel research and innovative development, look at whether recent articles report genuinely new methods, products or findings — that tells you whether your own paper fits.

Like TIJER, JNRID describes itself as a “UGC CARE Approved, Transparent Peer-Reviewed (Refereed) Journal as per new UGC Notification” with “Multidisciplinary, Monthly, Crossref DOI, Indexing in all major database & Metadata”, and it is shown here as a High Impact Factor journal. Its low cost charge is ₹970 INR / $50 USD, and submissions start at researchwave.org.

Mistakes authors make when verifying a journal

• Trusting a screenshot. A logo or a certificate image on a journal’s site proves nothing. Only the record at the register or database counts.
• Checking the title, not the ISSN. Titles are easy to copy; an ISSN is registered to one publication. Always search by ISSN.
• Ignoring the domain. Cloned journals use a near-identical name on a different website. Compare the domain with the one in the ISSN record.
• Confusing discovery with indexing. Appearing in a search result is not the same as being indexed in a curated database such as Scopus or Web of Science.
• Assuming a network shares one status. Every journal has its own ISSN and policies. Verify each journal individually, even within the same network.
• Forgetting the institution’s rule. Since the UGC-CARE list was discontinued, universities apply their own written criteria. Ask for the rule that applies to your degree, promotion or grant.

What to keep on file after you publish

Once your paper appears, save a small evidence folder: the ISSN Portal page for the journal, the published article PDF, the acceptance letter, the fee receipt, any DOI record, and screenshots of the journal’s peer-review and ethics policies as they stood when you published. If a committee later asks how you checked the journal, you can show the same evidence this page uses — dated, specific and independent of the journal’s own claims.

Questions worth asking the editorial office

If anything on a journal’s site is unclear, write to the editors before you submit. A genuine journal answers plainly; vague or pressured replies are themselves useful evidence. For JMVRA, the address is [email protected] (WhatsApp +919106365667). Useful questions include:

• What type of peer review do you use, and how many reviewers read each paper?
• What is the typical time from submission to first decision, and from acceptance to publication?
• Exactly what does the publication fee cover, and is anything charged separately?
• Is a DOI included, optional or unavailable, and who registers it?
• Under what licence are articles published, and do authors keep copyright?
• How are corrections, retractions and complaints handled after publication?

Keep the replies with your evidence folder. Together with the register records and the published policies, they give you a complete, defensible answer to the question this page is built around: is this journal valid for my purpose?