RSP - Publishing Support

Predatory Publishers

Predatory Publishers/Journals are a rising challenge to the international research environment. Essentially, predatory publishers are publishers that are involved in deceptive practices, including misrepresenting the quality of their peer review, usually with the aim of acquiring researchers' publishing fees.

The practices of predatory publishers vary widely, which has often made them difficult to identify. In 2019, a group of academics, publishers, research funders, academic institutions and policy makers met to establish a definition of predatory publishers:

Predatory journals and publishers are entities that prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship and are characterized by false or misleading information, deviation from best editorial and publication practices, a lack of transparency, and/or the use of aggressive and indiscriminate solicitation practices.

Grudniewicz, A., Moher, D., Cobey, K.D., et al. (2019) ‘Predatory Journals: No Definition, No Defence’. in Nature vol. 576 (7786). Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 210–212. available from <http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03759-y >

When assessing journals, there are a few things to look out for to avoid falling for a predatory publisher:

• False or Misleading Information: Often predatory publisher will have fake metrics numbers or memberships, false addresses and/or misrepresent their editorial board. Sometimes metrics from Google Scholar will be used over more reputable sources like Scopus, in order to misleadingly boost numbers.
• Publishing a Wide Scope: If the journal covers a wide scope of research topics, this can often be an indicator that it is a predatory journal that is simply aiming to have as many authors as possible publish with them.
• Offers of Quick Peer Review and Turnaround: Quality peer-review takes time; as such, journals that offer turnaround within days or even hours are unlikely to be ensuring that proper peer review is taking places.
• Lack of Transparency: It can be a warning sign if all the contact details go to the same or similar email address, or the only point of contact is a web form. Also, if processes such as peer review and turnaround are not clear, this may be because they are being misleading about how they are undertaken.
• Poor Spelling and Grammar: Low quality journal websites and publications can be an indicator of a quickly produced or cloned website without due care and attention to quality research practices.
• Aggressive, repeated and indiscriminate solicitation: Even it is through flattery, referring to the author's previously published work, predatory publishers will target authors with excessive emails inviting them to publish in their journal.

This is not a definitive list - there are other practices that might make a journal predatory, and vice versa a trusted journal may seem to be doing one of these things (e.g. a new or under-resourced journal may be easily confused with a predatory journal). This list should, therefore, be used as a guide to help you begin to assess a journal. If you are ever in doubt about a journal, please contact the Open Research and Scholarly Publications teams (oa.lib@coventry.ac.uk) who will be able to advise.

Video Summary (Source: ThinkCheckSubmit.org)

Further Resources

• Think. Check. Submit. - A checklist created by representatives across the research sector to help academics identify predatory publishers.
• Beall's List - A list of publishers and journals that have been identified as undertaking predatory practices.
• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) - A list of trusted Open Access journals that are regularly monitored to remove any titles that no longer meet its quality criteria