drkitten, if you noticed I was addressing CHF with the question, based on his comment. Why did you think you needed to answer?
Because the questions "how do you evaluate the worth of a journal" and "is the journal of 9-11 studies meritorious" are both questions worth answering, regardless of the person who answers. If you're under the impression that CHF's statement that J911 is worthless cat-box liner can somehow be dismissed because he, personally, doesn't have the expertise to make that statement, I thought I would "head you off at the pass."
I do have the expertise, and I agree with that statement.
Maybe it's just me but did you actually say something in all those words? I guess when those other journals you talk about started maybe they were avoiding a real peer-review in a real journal too.
No, they weren't. Granted, every journal has to start somewhere, and there's always a first volume/issue, at which point, the journal doesn't have a track record.
Oddly enough, we are aware of this. A lot of researchers, myself included, are nervous about submitting to a newly launched journal for precisely this reason; the fear that the journal will be total drek. This is where the other criteria come in. "A real journal is one where the brightest minds submit their work." One of the duties of the editorial board is to solicit articles and write them themselves, so you can get an idea of who will be writing in a brand-new journal by looking at the board. Ask yourself this question : "would I be proud to have an article in the same issue as these people?" "Would I be embarassed?" In the case of J9/11S, I'd be embarassed....
Furthermore, most journals are started, not to avoid peer review in "real" journals, but because there is an existing reseach community that has grown to the point where the then-existing journals can't really handle the publication load. When half of the
Journal of XYZ is about
W, then it's probably time to spin off the
Journal of WXYZ. Again, J9/11S doesn't score well; I haven't seen an overabundance of high quality papers in the mainstream engineering press about 9/11 -- in fact, I don't think I've seen
any high quality papers supporting 9/11 conspiracies in the mainstream engineering press.
But that's still largely irrelevant, because J9/11S is
not a new publication and we can see it's publication history. And the most damning evidence that it's a lousy journal is that it publishes lousy, badly-written, badly-edited, badly-reviewed papers.