AI journals have multiplied alongside the field itself, and for researchers that is both good news and a real problem. There are more places than ever to publish artificial intelligence research, but the scope, quality, and credibility of AI journals vary enormously. Choosing the wrong one can cost you months of review time, a rejection on scope grounds, or a paper that the right readers never find.
This guide explains what AI journals are, how they differ from conferences, and the practical criteria for comparing them. It also shows why the International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications (IJACSA), an established open access journal for computer science and AI research publishing since 2010, stands out among AI journals, and how to submit if it matches your work.
Disclosure: this article is published by The Science and Information (SAI) Organization, which also publishes IJACSA.
Looking to read AI journal articles rather than publish in them? Jump straight to the IJACSA archive, where every issue is free to browse and download.
Key takeaways
The strongest AI journals combine a clear scope, recognised indexing, transparent peer review, and open access with persistent identifiers such as DOIs.
Compare AI journals on scope, indexing, peer review, access and cost, and transparency, in that order.
Verify indexing claims yourself in Scopus or Web of Science instead of trusting a badge on a journal website.
IJACSA has published peer-reviewed computer science and AI research every month since 2010, as a gold open access journal under CC BY 4.0, with DOIs registered through Crossref.
If you want to read AI research rather than submit, the IJACSA and IJARAI archives are free to browse, with every issue and paper available online.
What Are AI Journals, Exactly?
AI journals are peer-reviewed publications that publish research on artificial intelligence and its subfields, such as machine learning, natural language processing, computer vision, knowledge representation, and robotics. Some focus on a single subfield, while others cover AI alongside the rest of computer science. Either way, the best AI journals share a few traits: a clear scope, a transparent review process, recognised indexing, and a long, verifiable publishing record.
That last point deserves attention. A journal that has published on a regular schedule for many years has a track record you can inspect: its archive, its editorial board, its citation data, and the researchers who have chosen to publish there. IJACSA is a strong example. Published monthly by The Science and Information (SAI) Organization since 2010, it has built more than fifteen years of peer-reviewed work across artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science, computational intelligence, and related areas of computer science, and it is indexed in both Scopus and Web of Science.
The right choice still depends on what your paper contributes and who needs to read it, so the sections below show how to compare AI journals against the same criteria.
Why the Choice of AI Journals Matters More Than Ever
The volume of AI research is growing quickly. The Stanford AI Index 2025 reports that total AI publications more than doubled between 2013 and 2023, rising from roughly 102,000 to more than 242,000, with a 19.7% increase in the last year alone.
For authors, that growth has two consequences. First, readers have far more to sift through, so the venue you choose is often the first signal of whether your paper deserves their attention. Second, reviewers and editors at the most competitive journals are stretched, which makes a poorly matched submission more likely to be rejected quickly. Spending an hour on journal selection before you submit usually saves weeks afterwards.
Journals vs. Conferences: Where AI Research Gets Published
AI is unusual among research fields because conferences carry so much weight. Even so, the same Stanford report puts journals at the largest share of AI publications in 2023 (41.8%), ahead of conferences (34.3%), while repositories such as arXiv have taken a growing share.
A practical way to decide: conferences suit fast-moving results that benefit from quick feedback, while journals suit complete studies, surveys, reviews, and work that needs space for full methods and evaluation. Many universities and funders also look at where a paper is published, so a journal indexed in Scopus or Web of Science is often the safer choice for promotion, degree requirements, and funding applications. Check your own institution's rules before you decide.
Five Criteria for Comparing AI Journals
Whichever shortlist of AI journals you build, run each one through the same five checks.
Scope and fit. Read the aims and scope, then skim the last two or three issues. If no recent paper resembles yours in topic and type (original research, survey, application), look elsewhere.
Indexing and visibility. Check whether the journal is indexed in services your institution recognises, such as Scopus or Web of Science, and whether each article receives a DOI registered through Crossref so that it can be found and cited reliably.
Peer review. Look for a clearly described process: how many reviewers, whether review is single-blind or double-blind, and what the journal evaluates (originality, correctness, relevance, readability).
Access and cost. Find out whether the journal is open access, which licence applies, and whether there is an article processing charge (APC). Reputable journals state fees openly before you submit.
Transparency. You should be able to identify the publisher, contact the editorial office, and see a named editorial board with real affiliations.
How to Spot Trustworthy AI Journals Before You Submit
Before you submit, run a quick credibility check. The Think. Check. Submit. initiative gives authors a checklist for this. Its questions are simple: Do you or your colleagues know the journal? Can you easily identify and contact the publisher? Is the peer-review process clearly described? Are the editorial board members identifiable and genuinely affiliated? Is the journal indexed where it claims to be, and is it transparent about fees?
Warning signs to watch for include guaranteed fast acceptance, unsolicited invitations that flatter your work, journal names that closely imitate well-known titles, and fees that only appear after acceptance. Check indexing directly in Scopus or the Web of Science Master Journal List rather than relying on a logo on the journal homepage. This habit protects you when you evaluate any journal on your shortlist, including IJACSA.
Open Access vs. Subscription AI Journals: What It Means for Your Paper
Open access AI journals make every article free to read from the day it is published. That helps your work reach students, practitioners, and researchers whose institutions lack a subscription, and many funders now require it. The usual trade-off is that open access journals cover their costs through APCs paid by authors or their funders.
Subscription journals typically charge authors little or nothing but place articles behind a paywall, which limits who can read them. Before choosing, check your funder and institution policies, and look at the licence. Gold open access, where the final published article is free to read immediately on the journal's own site, combined with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), lets others reuse your work with attribution, which is often what authors want.
Why IJACSA Stands Out Among AI Journals: Established Since 2010
The International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications (IJACSA) is a computer science journal that publishes AI research and has been doing so since 2010, so its track record is long enough to inspect for yourself. Artificial intelligence and machine learning sit at the front of its scope, alongside data science, computational intelligence, and network security, which makes it a natural home for AI research with a computing focus.
Over more than fifteen years of monthly publishing, IJACSA has built a reputation that you can verify rather than take on trust: dual indexing in Scopus and Web of Science, a public editorial board drawn from universities around the world, a complete archive of every issue, and a community of authors and reviewers across the globe.
Against the five criteria above, IJACSA looks like this:
Indexing: indexed in Scopus (CiteScore 3.4 for 2025, Q3) and in the Web of Science Emerging Sources Citation Index, along with EI Compendex, Inspec, and other databases.
Peer review: double-blind, with each article reviewed by at least three independent reviewers. The journal's acceptance rate is approximately 15%.
Access: a gold open access journal, with every article free to read and download immediately on publication under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). Authors keep the copyright to their work. An article processing charge (APC) applies to accepted papers, and the current fee schedule is published on the Call for Papers page.
DOI assignment and Crossref: SAI is a Crossref member, and every published article is assigned a DOI registered through Crossref, which gives each paper a permanent link and makes citations easier to track.
Transparency: the editor-in-chief, full editorial board, and editorial office contact are listed publicly, and every past issue is available in the IJACSA archive.
SAI also published a dedicated AI title, the International Journal of Advanced Research in Artificial Intelligence (IJARAI). It no longer accepts submissions, but the full-text IJARAI archive remains free to read.
Reading Published Papers in AI Journals: Start With the Archives
Not every visitor is looking to submit. If you want to read what has already been published, for a literature review, a benchmark comparison, or simply to see what current AI research looks like, the fastest route is an archive that lets you browse by issue and read full text without a login.
The IJACSA archive. Every volume and issue published since 2010 is listed by year, and each issue opens to its table of contents. Artificial intelligence and machine learning papers appear alongside other computer science topics, so scan the titles in each issue for what matches your interest.
The current issue. The latest published papers, for anyone who wants to see recent work first.
The IJARAI archive. The International Journal of Advanced Research in Artificial Intelligence was SAI's dedicated AI title. It no longer accepts submissions, but its full-text archive remains free to read, which makes it useful for readers whose interest is AI specifically.
Each article page gives the full text, the authors, and a DOI you can use to cite it, and all IJACSA articles are open access under CC BY 4.0, so you can read, download, and reuse them with attribution.
Preparing Your Manuscript for AI Journals
Good preparation improves your chances at any journal you target, and most of it is not specific to one venue.
State the contribution in the abstract. Say what is new, how you tested it, and what the results show, in plain terms.
Make results reproducible. Describe datasets, preprocessing, model settings, and evaluation metrics, and compare against current baselines rather than only older ones.
Be open about limitations and ethics. Reviewers expect a candid discussion of where the method fails, along with any data-privacy or bias considerations.
Follow the formatting rules. Read the author guidelines before you write the final version, not after.
Anonymise for double-blind review. Remove author names, affiliations, and identifying self-references from the manuscript file.
Submit to one journal at a time. IJACSA, like most journals, does not consider manuscripts that are under review elsewhere.
For IJACSA specifically, read the author guidelines, check the schedule on the Call for Papers page, and when your paper is ready, submit your manuscript to IJACSA.
Common Mistakes When Submitting to AI Journals
Ignoring scope. A strong paper sent to the wrong journal is still rejected. Match your topic to what the journal actually publishes.
Chasing impact numbers alone. A single metric says little about fit. Consider readership, indexing, and review quality together.
Overlooking fees and licences. Read the APC and copyright terms before you submit, not after acceptance.
Weak evaluation. Papers with a single dataset, no baselines, or no statistical care struggle at almost every serious venue.
Submitting too early. Ask a colleague outside your project to read the draft first. Unclear writing is a common reason for avoidable rejections.
Frequently Asked Questions About AI Journals
How do I choose between AI journals?
Start with scope: pick journals whose recent papers resemble yours. Then compare indexing, peer-review process, access model, and fees, and verify each claim directly in the indexing database or on the publisher's site.
Is IJACSA an AI journal, and is it indexed in Scopus and Web of Science?
IJACSA is a computer science journal that publishes AI and machine learning research as a core part of its scope, so it works as a home for AI papers with a computing focus. It is indexed in Scopus (CiteScore 3.4 for 2025, Q3) and in the Web of Science Emerging Sources Citation Index.
Do open access AI journals like IJACSA charge to publish?
IJACSA is a gold open access journal, so articles are free for everyone to read. An article processing charge applies to accepted papers, and the current schedule is published in the Publishing Fees section of its Call for Papers page.
Does IJACSA assign a DOI to published articles?
Yes. Every IJACSA article is assigned a DOI registered through Crossref, giving it a permanent link that is easy to cite and track.
Next Steps: Choosing Among AI Journals
Choosing among AI journals is less about finding the single best title and more about finding the one that fits your paper, your readers, and your requirements for indexing, access, and cost. Build a short list, compare each journal against the same five criteria, and verify every claim yourself.
If your work falls within computer science and artificial intelligence, explore IJACSA, a journal with more than fifteen years of publishing behind it, review the Call for Papers, and see whether it suits your next manuscript.
If you came to read rather than write, open the IJACSA archive and browse any issue; the full text of every paper is free.
