What is a predatory journal?
Predatory publishing
In Scientific Publishing, Predatory publishing, also write-only publishing or deceptive publishing, is an exploitative academic publishing business model that involves charging publication fees to authors without checking articles for quality and legitimacy, and without providing editorial and publishing services that legitimate academic journals provide, whether open access or not.
Image credits: © David Parkins.
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Characteristics
Complaints that are associated with predatory journals (open-access) publishing include:
· Accepting articles quickly with little or no peer review or quality control, including hoax and nonsensical papers.
· Notifying academics of article fees only after papers are accepted.
· Aggressively campaigning for academics to submit articles or serve on editorial boards.
· Listing academics as members of editorial boards without their permission, and not allowing academics to resign from editorial boards.
· Appointing fake academics to editorial boards.
· Mimicking the name or web site style of more established journals.
· Making misleading claims about the publishing operation, such as a false location.
· Using ISSNs improperly.
· Citing fake or non-existent impact factors.
· Boasting about being "indexed" by academic social networking sites (like ResearchGate) and standard identifiers (like ISSNs and DOIs) as if they were prestigious or reputable bibliographic databases.
Predatory publishers have also been compared to vanity presses.
Think. Check. Submit.
Think. Check. Submit. helps researchers identify trusted journals and publishers for their scientific research. Through a range of tools and practical resources, this international, cross-sector initiative aims to educate researchers, promote integrity, and build trust in credible research and scientific publications.
The List of Predatory Journals
We are creating a free and open list of predatory publishers and journals to help researchers and organizations identify publications that lack a reliable peer review process and that may negatively impact the scholarly reputation of individuals and institutions.
See the full list of predatory publishers and journals: