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Selecting a Journal for Publication: Predatory Publishing

This guide provides some recommendations and criteria for selecting a journal for publication; introduces with Open Access and Predatory Publishing.

Exploring predatory journals

With the Open Access movement, predatory publishers activated their services. They widely inviting authors to publish in Open Access. They differentiate fake, hijack, and predatory journals.

Predatory Journal 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.

Predatory Journal or Publisher

A few among many common features of predatory publishing to be aware of:

  • Can be an existing open access journal and indexed in DOAJ
  • Can be indexed in Abstract Databases (e.g. Web of Science, Scopus)
  • Payment for publishing is required
  • No review procedure / Fast Peer-Review
  • Fast publication
  • Invitation / Suspicious mailing 
  • Agents

Compare with other publishing models below. 

Academic Journal Models

Tips to Avoid Predatory Publishing

  1. Availability of website, the owner. Check via http://whois.com/
  2. Can you find information about a publisher?
  3. Check editorial board
  • The editorial board is not specified / One editorial board for different journals / Small geography
  • Are the places of work and positions indicated? Do you know the names of these people? Can you find information about them?
  • It is impossible to see the location of the editorial board
  1. Does a publisher keeps on sending spam or you notice an intrusive marketing?
  2. Can you find guidelines for authors?
  • Formatting guidelines for authors: most predatory journals do not have specific guidelines, including citation formats
  1. Can you find information on the copyright and peer-review process? 
  2. Author's fee
  3. Does a journal have an ISSN (International Standard Serial Number)? Check ISSN in ROAD*
  4. Can you see a physical address? Check via Google Maps
  5. Is a journal indexed in DOAJ, Scopus, or Web of Science?
  6. Website design, presence of pop-up and blinking elements, grammatical errors

  7. Does the publisher have a membership in Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA)? International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (STM)? Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)? Council of Science Editors (CSE)? European Association of Science Editors (EASE)? World Association of Medical Editors (WAME)?

Fake Journal

Features of fake publishing model (compare with predatory publishing):

  • The journal doesn't exist and not indexed in DOAJ (for Open Access Journals)
  • Clone of an existing journal (hijack):
    • Wulfenia (the original journal is a print-only peer-reviewed scientific journal of botany, but a clone is a multidisciplinary open-access journal) 
    • American Hystorical Journal (original is American Historical Journal)
    • The journal has a similar name to the famous journal on this subject, sometimes differing in prepositions OF or FOR
  • Journals are not indexed in abstract databases (e.g. Web of Science, Scopus)
  • Payment for publishing:
    • a token fee ≈ 300-400 €
    • request to pay first
  • Invitation:
    • Invitation / Suspicious mailing
    • The publisher keeps spamming or has intrusive marketing
  • Fast publication
  • Agents

Fake Journals

Fake Metrics in Fake Journal Website

Fake Journal Website

Clone of an existing journal

Fake Journals created by a group from Ghaziabad, India

Fake Journals Addresses

Fake/Predatory Metrics

Invitation/Suspicious mailing

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