Publish: Predatory publishing

There is an increasing prevalence of scams related to hijacked journals, where websites are created to fraudulently mimic an established journal. The sites, also referred to as ‘clone’, 'counterfeit' or ‘duplicate’ journals aim to entice authors to pay fees for publication in the fake journal.

Some tips to identify hijacked journals:

• Be particularly cautious if contacted with an invitation to publish
• Fees for open access publishing are often much lower than for legitimate journals
• The ‘About’, peer review, publication ethics and scope information on the site may be very brief and include typos
• Articles already published on the site are often of a low quality or copied from genuine journals but attributed incorrectly
• Contact details may be minimal, including an email address only, with no physical location, phone number or individuals named
• An unusually fast turn-around time between submission and publication may be advertised

Journal hijackers can go to a lot of effort to appear legitimate, using names of editors of real journals without their knowledge and links and logos of genuine citation databases.

Some ways to check if the journal is legitimate are:

• Use the checklists available on Think Check Submit to assess the journal
• Do a direct search for the journal title in search engines like Google to check if multiple results with slightly different domain names appear
• Search citation databases like Scopus and Web of Science directly rather than following links
• Retraction Watch have created a Hijacked Journal Checker which aims to list hijacked journal titles. However, lists of this type should not be used in isolation. It is important to use any list with caution, particularly in regards to the currency of the information and the criteria for inclusion on the list.

Vanity publishers may send unsolicited emails offering to publish your research.  In particular, vanity publishers will target higher degree students or recent graduates offering to publish a thesis as a book.  Many of these publishers provide very little or no editorial input or support and you will receive no marketing or distribution of your book after paying a large fee for their services.

Publishing with vanity presses may result in

• the loss of Copyright to your work and further publishing opportunity
• a poor quality publication
• loss of academic reputation