"Degree or No Degree"

I see a degree, at least for those last year engineering students without an established career, as a proof of competence. Trying to get hired without a degree, naturally means finding another way to convincingly demonstrate that you have the necessary skills. In other words, “show me what you can do.”

Now in some fields of study, I think this is perfectly reasonable.  For example, comp-sci majors can go develop a web sever or an app and graphic design students have a portfolio.

In some fields, however, the resources required to build a portfolio are just unreasonable for an individual to develop. Good luck finding a spare reactor to hone your skills in nuclear physics. It’s not going to happen outside of a university setting.

In the end, it seems to me like there should be a better way to establish what you have learned (or your ability to learn) outside of a degree. What would it look like? A testing service? An apprenticeship program? Or are portfolios enough? Or maybe just a shift in how people perceive the value of a degree is all that is required. What do you think?

How can we avoid the risk of publishing in a fake journal / how can we evaluate a journal's quality?

Impact Factor (IF) is one of the journal quality measures, but beside arguing about this measure, it is not easy for researchers to find the correct IF of any journal. One may say that we should depend on the IF calculation produced by Thomson Reuters. However, there is an issue here: it is not easy to find their report! And another issue: it is not easy to find the IF of a specific journal in their report (e.g., see attached file). On the other hand, some journals write their IF on their website, but don't declare where they got this IF. 
There are some sites that calculate journal IFs such as:
http://www.citefactor.org/impact-factor-list-2012.html
http://globalimpactfactor.com/
http://www.jifactor.com/ 
But I think that what's most risky here is publishing in a fake journal. For example, this website http://fakejournalss.wordpress.com/list-of-fake-computer-science-journals/
has a list of fake journals, but are they really fake?
Is there any way to know the true quality of journals and to avoid fake ones?