Predatory journals claim to be legitimate scholarly publications, but exploit the open-access publication model to deceive authors into paying them a fee. These publishers often lie about the journal’s impact factor, misrepresent their editorial board and falsely claim that they provide a peer-review process.
One of the first things you can do to determine whether a journal is predatory or not is to evaluate the e-mail invitation critically. Most predatory journals like talking about money. They will ask you to send them US$50 or $100 to publish your paper in two weeks. Looking for typos, grammatical errors and whether the timestamp of the e-mail matches the standard working hours for the publisher’s purported location can also help to indicate whether a journal is predatory or not.
After closely reviewing the e-mail, the researchers we spoke to also recommend looking at the journal’s website to evaluate its credibility.
For instance, does the journal have clear guidelines for its peer-review process and timeline? Also looks at the journal’s citation index, address and telephone numbers. If a journal says it’s coming from the United States, but the telephone number is from India, that doesn’t make sense.
Also checks out the members of the editorial team and tries to follow the links in their biographies.
Beyond exploring the website, an online search can provide insights into whether a journal is predatory or not.
Working out whether a journal is predatory or not can be particularly challenging for early-career researchers, who are often not very familiar with scientific publishers. In those cases, it’s best to reach out to more experienced colleagues for help.
