If you receive unsolicited emails from suspicious publishers or conference organizers, signs of predatory or fraudulent publishers include:
- The journal title or publisher name is non-specific (e.g. International Journals for Researchers, World Science Publisher).
- The website is poorly designed, using generic stock photos, clip-art style graphics, and containing spelling/grammar errors.
- The publisher's journals are inaccessible, non-functional, or only provide a few published articles.
- The publisher has no functional telephone number or postal address, or the address is residential when you search it on Google Maps.
- The email claims that journals are indexed in databases when they are not. You can verify their claims in the library databases.
- The use of vendor names (e.g. EBSCO, OCLC) in place of database names (e.g. Medline, Scopus) to avoid verification.
- Article-processing charges are not clearly described and are charged upon submission of work, not upon publication.
- The peer-review process is not clearly described, and the journal claims unrealistic turnaround times (e.g. 1 week).
- The editorial board contains the names of individuals who cannot be verified as working at the institutions listed with their names.
Information excerpted from:
Council of Science Editors. (2018). Predatory or deceptive publishers - Recommendations for caution. Retrieved from https://www.councilscienceeditors.org/resource-library/editorial-policies/cse-policies/approved-by-the-cse-board-of-directors/predatory-deceptive-publishers-recommendations-caution/
Read more:
Beall, J. (2016) Best practices for scholarly authors in the age of predatory journals. Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, 98(2), 77-9. Retrieved from https://publishing.rcseng.ac.uk/doi/10.1308/rcsann.2016.0056
Prater, C. (2018). 8 Ways to Identify a Questionable Open Access Journal. Retrieved from https://www.aje.com/en/arc/8-ways-identify-questionable-open-access-journal/
