"Think, Check... and Think Again:" A Checklist

Abstract

This checklist, produced to accompany a poster presentation at the 2026 Charleston Conference, is a distillation of preliminary findings from an in-process research study that seeks to evaluate a growing class of English-language journal titles owned by Chinese institutions. Standard journal evaluation tools do not tell researchers who owns, funds or supervises a journal. This ongoing project combines a literature review with a structured content analysis of 350 journals and aims to produce a practical tools for librarians can use with researchers acting as authors, peer reviewers, and especially for prospective editors or board members, where a named, ongoing affiliation may need to be disclosed to employers and funders. However, Chinese-owned journals are the test case – not the limit: the same questions about ownership, sponsorship and funding apply to any journal, and the aim is informed navigation, not avoidance and the overall goal of this project is to make ownership and sponsorship a routine part of journal evaluation, alongside indexing, impact and editorial practice.