5 Red Flags: Spotting Predatory Journals
- June Burke
Predatory journals are fake publications that claim to be scholarly resources. In reality, predatory journals exploit authors by charging large fees in order to publish articles without following academic publishing standards.
Are you considering submitting your article for publication in a new or lesser-known journal? Consider the below factors that might be a sign of the journal’s fraudulence.
You received an email inviting you to publish.
This email might include grammatical or stylistic errors and may invite you to submit in a field outside of your area of expertise.
The invitation may not state the Article Processing Charge (APC), it may not include a link to an official website or complete contact information, and it may include a home or non-office address.
The journal has made several promises to you.
These may include:
Rapid peer review turnaround and publication.
No plagiarism check.
The journal is listed in CrossRef, WorldCat, Google Scholar, or another indexing service, but is not indexed in any standard database.
The journal’s impact factor does not appear from a trusted source.
A predatory journal website will not refer to a source for journal metrics, such as the impact factor. If you’re unsure if a journal’s source is reputable, use a trustworthy source of journal metrics, such as Clarivate’s Journal Citation Reports to check the impact factor.
The journal is not currently indexed for MEDLINE.
If a journal record includes the below information in two fields, the journal is NOT predatory.
Electronic Link – check that a link is included in this field.
Current Indexing Status – this field should read “Currently indexed for MEDLINE.”
The journal appears on a list of predatory journals and publishers.
Beall’s List of Potential Predatory Journals and Publishers contains a sizable (although not exhaustive) list of predatory journals. This list should be used as a guideline.
Do you have additional questions about how to best spot a predatory journal? Refer to Welch Library’s Scholarly Publishing page or reach out to Nancy Shin (nshin4@jh.edu).