There are many “publishers” who abuse the Open Access principle to their advantage. There are a number of fraudulent/pseudoscientific publications that are based primarily on collecting royalties. This should be avoided.

ORIGINAL MEANING – a journal/publisher with a disproportionate increase in subscription price

What is a predatory journal/publisher today

  • It prioritizes self-interest (financial profit) over scientific contribution and education
    WARNING: financial profit = goal of commercial publishers (Elsevier, Springer, Wiley…) – cannot be judged by this criterion only
  • Provides false or misleading information
  • Deviates from best editorial or publishing practices (lack of quality control, no peer review)
  • Not transparent – we don’t know who we are dealing with
  • Uses aggressive practices, especially spam email

Practices of predatory journals

  • At first glance, they look like regular journals
  • Difficult communication with the editorial team
  • Wide scope of the journal
  • Offer a quick peer review process
  • Parasitizing on well-known journal titles, names of well-known personalities in the field mentioned without their awareness/consent (e.g. on the editorial board)
  • General journal titles (e.g. journal of current trends in …, journal of research in …, international journal of …)
  • False Impact Factor (IF) on significant position (e.g. Global/Universal IF, Scientific Journal IF, etc.)
  • Non-complience copyright – e.g. creating an illegal copy of a quality journal website (so called highjacked journal) – all information remains, just change contact details and payment gateway
  • Extensive list of databases in which the journal is indexed:
    • Provides indexing in indexes without checking the quality of the content (Google, Google Scholar, Crossref)
    • Indexing in databases of questionable quality

Predators are not just journals

Publishers with entire portfolios

Predatory book publishers

  • So-called vanity press – publishing books to order
  • Targets young authors (graduates)
  • Author pays for publishing the book
  • The publisher does not provide routine editorial work (no quality control)
  • High costs / low readership
  • Results cannot be further published by a reputable publisher
  • Ex. Lambert Academic Publishing – part of the Omniscriptum Publishing Group (formerly VDM Verlag Dr. Müller)

Predatory conferences

  • Profit orientation – without meeting the basic goal of bringing experts together and exchanging ideas within a single discipline
    • Attractive venue (attracts attendees)
    • Basic quality control:
      • Verify the identity of the conference organizer
      • Check journals (in which papers are to be published), indexing in databases, etc.
  • Ex. WASET

Predatory universities

  • Promise an excellent education and degree (career boost) – that’s not going to happen
  • The goal – to collect the school fees from the students

Basic journal verification

  • Verification of the publisher, journal’s editorial office, editorial board members, contact details
  • Verification of indexing in reputable databases – if it states IF, the journal must be listed in the Journal Citation Reports index of the Web of Science database

There are also predators that have a real IF factor and thus have made it into the Web of Science or SCOPUS databases. If a journal has a real IF, it is necessary to continue the research.

  • Check the regular indexing of the journal in databases – it is important to check the journal is indexed regularly and systematically
  • Publication standards (identifiers) and journal web presentation
    • Web structure, unique IDs, etc.
    • Clear and visible information for authors
    • Copyright issues, publication ethics
    • Consistent information on the website (individual sections contradict each other – copied)
  • Review process
    • Is the peer review process clearly described?
    • Often too short time for good quality peer review and publication of the manuscript
    • Reviews within 2 weeks x publication within 3 weeks – does not show quality very well
      • Lack of time to ensure, reach out to quality reviewers
      • Lack of time to produce a quality review
  • Publication fee (adequacy of the fee to the quality of the journal)
  • Be sure to consult with colleagues who publish
  • DO NOT CONFUSE: new or underfunded journals with predatory journals

Recommendations for conference verification

  • Verify the conference organizers (trusted institution x fictitious institution)
  • Publication of papers in a special issue of a journal – check the journal (or publisher)
  • Check previous editions of the conference
  • Find out the citation rate of papers from previous editions of the conference
  • Check the invited speakers
  • Obtain maximum information about the conference from colleagues

Predators undermine the scientific process

  • Lack of quality control – publishing fraudulent research, filling the space with garbage – pseudoscience
  • Waste of resources (funding, time)
    • Author does not get results to desired community, readership and citation rate of predator publications is questionable
  • Copyright infringement
    • E.g. illegal copy of text of highly cited article placed on predator’s website – creates misleading advertising, difficult to remove)
  • Damage to reputation (of scientist, institution, archive, OA, science as a whole)
    • Scientists are also judged by where they publish
    • Results are already published/posted once, cannot be reused for serious publication
  • Erosion of trust in science / for science

What can we do with it?

  • Training – how to identify predators
  • Lists of trusted journals / predator journals
  • Lists and websites with control questions
  • Reducing institutional pressure to publish
  • Discussions on suppressing Gold OA, promoting Green and Diamond OA

Tips (tools, resources) for determining credibility

Portal ISSN

  • Checking the existence of the specified ISSN
  • Does not guarantee the quality of the journal – anyone who asks will receive it

DOAJ

  • Directory of OA journals
  • Quality Standards
  • Listing in the registry is based on the judgment of the editor of the region + journals may be awarded the DOAJ Seal if certain criteria are met
  • ATTENTION:
    • Not all credible OA journals are registered here
    • On the other hand, predatory journals may also appear here
    • Judging cannot be based on DOAJ ranking only

COPE

  • Committee on Publication Ethics
  • Publisher is a member = verified publisher and journals – all passed credibility checks

Predatory publishing

  • Allows you to check the ISSN portal, the DOAJ directory and COPE at the same time
  • NOT ALL QUALITY JOURNALS ARE REGISTERED IN ALL THREE SOURCES !!!

Check indexing in databases

  • WOS, Scopus, SJR, PubMed
  • Cannot check only indexing (predators can be found here too!) – always check comprehensively

Additional resources



, Last change: 28.01.2025