How to spot a predatory journal (and why to avoid them!)

---

Predatory publishers produce ‘pretend journals’ and charge high publication fees to publish your work

How to spot predatory publishers

It’s generally not hard to spot predatory publishers. For example, journals that email you out of the blue inviting your contributions are almost always predatory. Real journals just don’t beg for papers. The invitation will most likely resemble the style and grammar of Nigerian 419 scam emails rather than the norms of academic communication. And if the promises they make (e.g., super-fast peer review) sound too good to be true, that’s probably because they are not true at all.

However, if you do not feel comfortable trusting your gut feeling, here are some additional criteria that you need to consider (drawing on a list by Jocalyn Clark, which appeared at the British Medical Journal Opinion blog, and an article by Willy Renandya).

1. Blacklists

For a number of years, the go-to reference list for checking whether a journal is legit was the Scholarly Open Access blog, or ‘Beall’s List’, which was curated by Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at Auraria Library in Denver. This is sadly defunct (here’s why [paywall]), but cached versions of the list are still available (e.g., here). Cabell’s Scholarly Analytics also curate a blacklist which you should consult if your university subscribes to it.

2. Whitelists

Another thing you can do to evaluate the quality of a journal is to check whether it is indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), a list of mostly reputable publishers. To be listed in the DOAJ, journals should meet certain quality thresholds and practices. So, if they include a journal in their list, then it’s probably legitimate. This criterion should be used in conjunction with others, however, because it is not uncommon for some shady publishers to somehow make it into the list, and some promising journals might not be listed because they have not been evaluated yet.

3. Professional organisations

In addition to the DOAJ, legitimate publishers tend to be associated with professional publishing organisations, such as the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the International Association of Scientific, Technical, & Medical Publishers (STM), and the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA). The journal websites sometimes indicate such affiliations by adding badges to their website, but so do predatory publishers. So rather than trust the information on the publishers’ websites, you should refer to the directories of the publishing organisations.

4. Indexing

The most important journals are indexed in major metrics databases, such as PubMedCentral (free) or the Web of Science (paywall). Once again, you need to be careful, because predatory journals invariably, and falsely, claim to be indexed. They often display metrics in their website which are either entirely made up, or created by scam databases. The image below (taken from Scholarly Open Access) shows the URL of such a spurious database. This is maintained by an entity who call themselves the Institute for Science Information, a name which mimics the legitimate Thomson-Reuters Institute for Scientific Information.

On the other hand, just because a journal is not indexed does not always mean that it is predatory. Many journals, especially newer ones or those with a regional focus, are not listed in the major indices.

5. Boards and peer review practices

To the extent possible, you need to try to evaluate how transparent the editorial and peer review processes seem. To begin with, look for the names of the editor and editorial board. If you can’t find these, that’s a huge red flag. You will also want to verify any information that you do find because some predatory journals just lie about their editorial boards. You can do this by checking the academics’ university web pages and CVs.

Another thing to look for is whether the journal acknowledges the reviewers’ work. This is often done in the last issue of every year. Not all journals publish this information, but it’s still worth considering in conjunction with everything else. A much faster turnaround is suspicious and it might mean that the journal does not really conduct proper peer review.

You will also want to consider how fast peer review is carried out. You can do this by looking at the submission and publication dates for individual articles. In a bona-fide journal, peer review is a long process, which often lasts several months. If a journal somehow manages to publish several issues a year, and delivers a very fast turnaround time, this is a very strong indication that they are not providing rigorous peer review.

6. Fees

While on the topic of transparency, you will also want to see how clearly the publishing costs are described. Many open-access journals levy Article Processing Charges, or APCs, for every article they publish. You should be able to find information about these at the website of the journal or their publisher. If this information is hard to locate, you should ask the editors.

The two greatest red flags are when the journal charges submission fees (as opposed to publication charges) and when publication involves fees that are not clearly described. Another red flag is when a journal charges disproportionately high fees for the services they provide. Willy Renandya helpfully notes that charges over $300 are suspect. (However, if you were to point out that the Article Processing Charges levied by publishers like Elsevier or Springer also qualify them as predatory publishers, I would find it hard to contest your view).

---

I hope that the advice above helps you tell predatory publishers apart from legitimate ones. In some ways, such journals are rather like pornography: though they are hard to define, they are typically easy to recognise. If you’re interested, you can read about one such journal below.

---

Some reasons not to publish in a predatory journal

Work published in predatory journals is wasted

If you publish your work in a predatory journal, you cannot change your mind later, and try your luck with a better publisher. When a journal accepts an article for publication, the author transfers the copyright to the publisher. Publishing the same content in a different venue would be a violation of the publisher’s copyright and could lead to legal action. More importantly, all reputable journals will insist that any work you submit to them has not been previously published anywhere. I understand that it must be very frustrating when a solid piece of research is lost amid the clutter typically found in fly-by-night journals. Unfortunately though, if such a mistake happens, there is very little that one can do about it.

Predatory journals sometimes just vanish

When you publish your work in any open-access journal, the implicit expectation is that they will make your work available to readers forever. Less reputable journals, however, tend to appear and disappear overnight. It is also very unlikely that they make a suitable arrangement to transfer their content to some kind of depository or content provider. What this means is that you will have no way to verify that this article was ever published. This makes it hard to use this publication for career progression.

Even if papers do not just disappear, there is a danger of them becoming de-listed or the paper being retracted. Academic publishers and indexing companies (companies that catalogue journals and track citations, similar to how Google indexes online content) are becoming increasingly aware of the dangers of predatory publishing and are slowly taking action against it. For example, when SAGE acquired the Journal of Intelligent and Fuzzy Systems in 2023, they reviewed the articles that appeared in the journal and quickly retracted 450 questionable articles. Similarly, Clarivate (a major indexing company) de-listed more than 30 questionable journals in 2021 for questionable practices. When such things happen, your article becomes academically worthless, so it’s best to avoid associating your work with shady publishers.

---

In conclusion

I think that Renandya hits the nail on the head when he makes the following remarks:

It’s not worth paying $500 to get your paper published in a bogus international journal. Use the money instead for other more useful purposes. You can donate it to a charitable organization or set up a scholarship fund for your needy students. Or use it for your own professional development needs by buying reference materials produced by respectable publishers.

It is true that this is sometimes easier said than done in a high-pressure publish-or-perish culture, but whatever the short-term benefit of publishing in a ‘fly-by-night’ journal, in the long run this will hurt your career.

---

---

More to read

You can read up on predatory journals by following the links below:

1. Investigating journals: The dark side of publishing (Nature News)
2. Cabell’s New Predatory Journal Blacklist: A Review (The Scholarly Kitchen)
3. How do you choose a journal when it’s time to submit a paper? (Scientist Sees Squirrel)
4. How are we encouraging predatory publishers? (I wrote this with the Greek higher education context in mind, but I think it’s more broadly relevant)

If you have any stories or comments about such publishers, which might be helpful to other readers, you might want to add a comment in the space below. Also please help combat predatory publishing by using the social sharing buttons below to share this content with anyone else who might find it helpful.

---