Information for Faculty

Predatory publishers and journals target researchers with "too good to be true" offers, prioritize profit over quality scholarship, and lack proper vetting and peer review. Researchers who publish in these venues risk damaging their reputations and credibility in their fields.

Red flags to look out for:

• Lack of peer review
• Spam emails
• No editorial board or advisory committee
• High publishing fees
• Poorly designed websites
• Fake impact factors

• Your best bet is to start with the library databases. Because they are responsible for what articles are indexed in the database, they research the journals and publications that they index to ensure that only high quality research is included. Although predatory publishers are getting really good at appearing legitimate, using the databases is the first and simplest strategy to avoiding them.
• If you’ve found an article somewhere else, or you’re concerned about the quality of the article, the first step would be to check the lists of known predatory publishers to make sure that the journal and publishing company are not listed.
  • Beall’s List: originally started by a librarian, he got so many death threats and swatting attempts, he chose not to continue moderating the list. It has a list of both predatory journals and predatory publishers, but no one is adding new predatory publishers to the list.
  • Think Check Submit has a range of tools and resources to help potential authors avoid submitting to predatory journals. This is specifically designed for authors looking to publish; it also has information on avoiding predatory conferences.
  • Ulrich’s: An easy to search source of detailed information on over 300,000 periodicals of all types; it provides information on who the publisher is, what type of periodical it is, if the journal is still active, it’s format, etc. Unless a journal is absolutely brand new, if it is not included in Ulrich’s database, it is likely a predatory journal.
• If you’re still not sure if the article is reputable or not, these are some questions you can look into to determine if you should trust the source:
  • Is it peer-reviewed? Has it gone through a detailed critique by qualified scholars? If you go to the journal website, they should be upfront about the process an author goes through to be published.
  • Is it published in a top-tier academic journal? This is where the impact factor can be helpful; in general, the higher the impact factor, the more rigorous the scrutiny the author has gone through.
  • Do other scholars trust this work? Have other scholars cited this article in their own research? Keep in mind that this won’t happen immediately, so if it’s a new paper, you can’t expect it to have been cited much.
  • Who funded the research? If published in a high-quality academic journal, authors are required to disclose funding sources. If a study has been funded by an entity that has a monetary interest in the outcome of the study, there may be concerns about its validity.
  • What are the authors’ credentials? Where does the author work? Have they published before? Do they work in the same field of study as their research? (This is not full-proof; I’m listed as an author on a paper about paternity leave, I’m not a specialist in paternity leave; but I was included as an author because I designed the search that found the articles included in the study).
  • How old is the study? In some fields, older studies may not be reliable.
  • Do the authors have a conflict of interest? Similar to the question of funding, it is important to be leery of research conducted by individuals that stand to gain from the findings in the study.
  • Are there problems or concerns with the study methodology? Here is a well written article on spotting bad science.
  • Does the journal editing board seem to match the journal topic? For example, if you see a health sciences journal, but the editor is listed as a faculty member at MIT in a field completely unrelated to health sciences, that may be a red flag.
  • Does the website look really pretty but have obvious poor grammar? This can be a sign of a predatory journal, because they haven’t spent the time to even proofread the website.
  • Do the editorial board members live in the same country where the journal is published?
  • Does the address listed on the website of the journal/publisher actually exist? Is it a random residential address? This may be a red flag.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that legitimate journals can publish legitimate research that may have some of these red flags; if you spot only one or two of these things, you don’t need to automatically dismiss the journal/publisher as predatory. But the more red flags you see, the more likely it is that you are dealing with a predatory publisher.