What Is A Predatory Publisher?
Predatory or deceptive publishing are terms describing publishers or entities that exploit authors by charging publication fees (commonly known as article processing charges) yet don’t deliver on their promise of the editorial and publishing services (such as peer review) that are associated with legitimate publishers. Deceptive publishers typically prey on a researcher’s need to publish in order to get an academic appointment, gain promotion, or achieve tenure.
These publishers often engage in deceptive and unethical business practices and make false claims about a journal’s impact factor, indexing, high standards, and peer review.
Why You Should Avoid Predatory Journals
- Your work may be subject to second-rate peer review
- Your work work could disappear if the publisher goes out of business
- Predatory journals are not usually indexed in academic databases, thus decreasing the readership and impact of your work
- Predatory or deceptive journals may serve as an outlet for plagiarized material or fabricated results
- The journal's bad reputation may be extended to the authors, their institutions, or even the entire field or discipline
This box courtesy University of Arizona Libraries, © 2023 The Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of The University of Arizona, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Avoiding Predatory Journals
- Identifying and Avoiding Predatory JournalsSlides from the above presentation on predatory journals.
Journal Evaluation Resources
- Think. Check. SubmitTools and checklists for evaluating unknown publishers and publications. Make this your first stop.
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
A community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals. DOAJ is maintained by the Infrastructure Services for Open Access.
- SHERPA/RoMEO: Publisher Copyright & Self-Archiving PoliciesDatabase of journal copyright policies that doubles as a list of legitimate journals.
- Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly PublishingCommittee of Publication Ethics' list of best practices and indications of what to look for on a legitimate journal's website.
- Cabell's Predatory Journal CriteriaThe criteria used by a scholarly analytics company to identify predatory journals.