Is it right to ignore publications coming from non-top publishers? When I look into a specific problem over Google Scholar and simple Google Search, I find many related publications from publishers other than IEEE, ACM, Elsevier, Springer etc.

Usually the authors come from Indian, Chinese, Arabic institutions. My initial instinct is to ignore them, however I always feel as if there might be something important.

What is the right thing to do in such cases?
There are a lot of good publications in the world that are not published by mega-publishers.  Some of them you've never heard of because they are regional or specific to certain subfields, but are still very good.  It's also often difficult for people from certain countries to publish in mainstream conference venues due to visa issues. For example, IEEE and ACM usually require at least one author to be present in person, and that may simply be impossible for, say, a group of Iranian authors and a conference being held in the U.S.  Likewise, the cost of travel is often prohibitive for authors from the developing world.

That said, there's also a lot of junk publications in junk venues, and even something like the IEEE stamp doesn't mean you're reading a real paper.

So how should you evaluate a paper in a dubious venue?  Just like you would any other paper:


Is it on target with what you are looking for?
Are the results significant?
Is the data credible?
Is it part of a network of related papers building toward the presented result?


Publications in dubious venues are just much more likely to fail these tests.