Centre for Journalology

What is a predatory journal?​ 

Predatory journals are academic journals that fail to uphold expected best practices. For example, they may not conduct peer reviews or index their articles. Working with a team of international stakeholders, we established a formal consensus definition for "predatory journal."

“Predatory journals & 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.”

This definition was the culmination of a three-part research program. 

Part 1: A detailed summary

Here we summarized all the characteristics of predatory journals from the literature.

Part 2: A consensus survey

In three rounds of the survey, experts voted on whether they thought the characteristics we found from the literature were key features of predatory journals.

Part 3: A consensus definition

A consensus definition was established and a plan of action to address predatory journals was formed. This plan included the need to develop a ‘one stop shop’ of resources on predatory journals. This website aims to meet this need.

Challenges distinguishing predatory and legitimate journals

The definition of predatory journals/publishers is presently being operationalized to be able to support direct assessments about a given journal’s transparency practices. A key challenge with predatory journals is that sometimes the distinction between predatory journals and legitimate journals is not clear cut. There are a number of factors that contribute to the challenge of distinguishing predatory and legitimate journals.

• Many legitimate journals operate behind closed doors (e.g., conduct closed peer review), meaning that it is difficult to openly evaluate their practices.
• Journal operating budgets vary tremendously – some actions considered to be best practice have costs barriers that are too high for some legitimate journals to overcome (e.g., costs associated with archiving).
• It’s possible that "junk science" (e.g., research with poor methodological quality or reporting) can appear in legitimate journals. While this is problematic, we view this as a distinct issue. 

Who do "predatory journals" prey upon?

The terms "predatory" implies that researchers are "prey" to these journals. While there are certainly many instances of researchers falling prey and inadvertently submitting to predatory journals they thought were legitimate, there are other cases where researchers knowingly submit to these outlets. Researchers face a pressure to publish – the number of academic articles published is often used as a currency for success. Predatory journals exist in part because there is an exploitable market that is willing to support them.

This suggests that the term ‘predatory’ may not reflect the broad realities of how predatory journals function or how the community interacts with them. We none-the-less use the term here since it has had a broad uptake in the community. 

Developing a journal authenticator​

We are working to develop a digital journal authenticator tool which ‘checks’ how transparently a journal operates. The aim of the tool is to provide users with information about a journal to help them decide if they should interact with it (e.g., read, submit, cite). 

What is a predatory journal?​ 

Predatory journals are academic journals that fail to uphold expected best practices. For example, they may not conduct peer reviews or index their articles. Working with a team of international stakeholders, we established a formal consensus definition for "predatory journal."

“Predatory journals & 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.”

This definition was the culmination of a three-part research program. 

Part 1: A detailed summary

Here we summarized all the characteristics of predatory journals from the literature.

Part 2: A consensus survey

In three rounds of the survey, experts voted on whether they thought the characteristics we found from the literature were key features of predatory journals.

Part 3: A consensus definition

A consensus definition was established and a plan of action to address predatory journals was formed. This plan included the need to develop a ‘one stop shop’ of resources on predatory journals. This website aims to meet this need.

Challenges distinguishing predatory and legitimate journals

The definition of predatory journals/publishers is presently being operationalized to be able to support direct assessments about a given journal’s transparency practices. A key challenge with predatory journals is that sometimes the distinction between predatory journals and legitimate journals is not clear cut. There are a number of factors that contribute to the challenge of distinguishing predatory and legitimate journals.

• Many legitimate journals operate behind closed doors (e.g., conduct closed peer review), meaning that it is difficult to openly evaluate their practices.
• Journal operating budgets vary tremendously – some actions considered to be best practice have costs barriers that are too high for some legitimate journals to overcome (e.g., costs associated with archiving).
• It’s possible that "junk science" (e.g., research with poor methodological quality or reporting) can appear in legitimate journals. While this is problematic, we view this as a distinct issue. 

Who do "predatory journals" prey upon?

The terms "predatory" implies that researchers are "prey" to these journals. While there are certainly many instances of researchers falling prey and inadvertently submitting to predatory journals they thought were legitimate, there are other cases where researchers knowingly submit to these outlets. Researchers face a pressure to publish – the number of academic articles published is often used as a currency for success. Predatory journals exist in part because there is an exploitable market that is willing to support them.

This suggests that the term ‘predatory’ may not reflect the broad realities of how predatory journals function or how the community interacts with them. We none-the-less use the term here since it has had a broad uptake in the community. 

Developing a journal authenticator​

We are working to develop a digital journal authenticator tool which ‘checks’ how transparently a journal operates. The aim of the tool is to provide users with information about a journal to help them decide if they should interact with it (e.g., read, submit, cite). 

Open access publishing

The decision of where to publish your research is an important one. Where you publish impacts who will read and use your findings. Discussing your study and findings with colleagues who are content experts in your field may be a good first step in the process of selecting a relevant journal. Whether a journal is open access or not, may also be an important consideration.

There are several reasons you may choose to prioritize publishing in open access journals. For example, some argue that there is a moral imperative to make research produced freely available to others. Free access means that published work is accessible to researchers in developing countries. It also means the general public can access the findings, which is particularly relevant in Canada, where taxes paid may be used to support research.

Work published in an open access format is more likely to be cited:

Citation Advantage of Open Access Articles

Open Access Meets Discoverability: Citations to Articles Posted to Academia.edu

Is the journal open access?

In order to be compliant with the Tri-Agency Open Access Policy published manuscripts must be accessible through the publisher’s website, or from within an online repository within 12 months. Please note that individuals in receipt of graduate scholarships and fellowships are not required to adhere to the Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on publications. However, the Agencies do nonetheless encourage open access publishing. FlourishOA can be used to obtain price aggregates and information on publishing impact when selecting an open access journal.

You can use the SHERPA/ROMEO webpage to determine what type of copyright policies and self-archiving procedures exist at various journals.

The Open Access movement is becoming much more widespread, in part because of a number of national funders now requiring manuscripts to be made open access within a certain period of time from their date of publication. If you would like to learn more about the various formats of Open Access, Peter Suber maintains an informative website on this topic. You can also view the How open is it? document produced by PLOS and collaborators to learn more about the various formats of open access.

Note that not all Open Access journals require an article processing charge to be paid. 

List of open access journals that don't charge a processing fee

Making your paper open access?

There are a number of way to make your research open access. One easy way is to simply publish the work in an open access journal. This will make the work openly available immediately at the time of publication. However, sometimes this option, known as ‘gold open access’ may not be possible. For example, many open access journals require an article processing fee to be paid to publish work.

Fee waivers or discounts can be requested to avoid these costs if, for example, the work is unfunded or lead by a student. The discounts available for open access publishing (see below box) may also be valuable in this respect.

However, in some instances researchers may choose not to publish their work in an open access journal because they don’t have sufficient funds, or because the best suited journal publishes under the traditional publishing model (i.e., not open access). In these instances researchers are encouraged to self-archive their work in an open access repository. This would ensure compliance to the Tri-Agency Policy on Open Access. This process of self-archiving work is called ‘green open access’.

To make work green open access researchers should use the SHERPA/ROMEO web-page to determine what type of copyright policies and self-archiving procedures exist at the journal where they published. Subsequently, they can use the uOttawa Repository, or another similar tool, to make deposit their work. Please note that researchers can deposit their work at the time of publication and simply stipulate an embargo period in the uOttawa Repository. 

Be cautious of predatory journals

The advent of open access publishing has coincided with the rise in publishers and journals which seek profit but fail to operate transparently and have self-interest in mind.

It is important to be critical of journals when deciding where to submit your manuscript. Since many predatory journals solicit submissions via e-mail invitations, you should be particularly cautious when considering e-mail invites from journals you have not heard of, or from people you don’t know personally. Also beware of potential predatory journals when looking for new journals on major search engines. 

How to identify a predatory journal

There are numerous lists which provide guidance on how to detect a predatory journals. A systematic review search conducted in November 2018 at our Centre found 93 unique checklists to support researchers in detecting a predatory journal. The continued development of such checklists may be confusing and of limited benefit.  

We suggest that researchers consider the following suggestions to make an overall assessment of a journal:  

If the journal is open access, is it listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)? If yes, the journal is likely not predatory because of the vetting done by DOAJ. However, a journal has to have been in operation for one year to be listed.  

Is the journal a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)? If yes, the journal is likely not predatory because of the membership requirements of COPE (journal published for at least one year and journal practices follow the COPE principles of publication ethics outlined in the COPE Core Practices)

Does the journal present false information? It may promote a fake impact factor on its website, e.g. Index Copernicus Value (ICV) or false indexing. If yes, the journal is likely predatory and you should consider avoiding this journal.

Have you been invited to submit to the journal via e-mail? If so, do you know the journal already from your reading or previous publishing experience? Do you know the editor directly? Do your colleagues know the journal? If not, this may not be a good outlet to choose – if you and your peers aren’t reading the journal, even if it is not predatory, it may not be the best choice.