Flattering email to invite you to submit an article or serve on the editorial board of a "scholarly" journal
- poor language with typos and awkward style
- vocabulary below industry standard with multisyllabic words
- offer sounds too good to be true
Journal title
- sounds similar to a reputable publication (words are in different order or mixed from several other titles)
- contains prestigious-sounding but potentially vague terms such as "advanced", "global","international", "universal", "world", "open", (although these words are also used by reputable journals)
- might be hijacked from a legitimate academic journal: a bogus website offers rapid publication for a fee
Website with information on the journal, editorial board, and publisher
- site looks amateurish and unprofessional (layout, typos, poor quality pictures, flashy ads, dead links, abundance of well known logos)
- multiple pages "under construction", including current and past issues, editorial board
- missing, scarce, or contradictory information on "About Us" page (claiming a US address - check with Google Maps)
- contact information is missing, incomplete, or leads to unavailable links
- unclear or falsely claimed affiliation to scholarly associations or reputable organizations
- same publisher publishes multiple journals with a broad scope and from different disciplines
- editors and editorial board members are from all over the world and have no academic credentials (or are unaware that they are listed!)
Metrics and indexing
- no ISSN, no DOI
- invented or fake metrics (sounding similar to established metrics used by reputable journals)
- Impact Factor can't be verified in Journal Citation Reports
- falsely claimed to be indexed, e.g., in DOAJ
- not listed in reputable sources such as Ulrich's Periodical Directory
Article processing and peer review
- lack of clear instructions to authors
- lack of transparency or policies about fees related to publishing
- article processing fees look below that of reputable open access journals
- peer review process is not clearly explained
- peer review seems to be extremely fast (i.e., days) - may be non-existent
- articles are to be submitted via email (some predatory publishers use legitimate editorial manager systems - it doesn't make them legitimate)
Negative reputation
- journal and/or publisher is already listed on Beall's list
- listed on Cabell's Blacklist
