Publishing Tips: Scholarly vs Predatory Publications

University and College libraries subscribe to databases which have had their contents vetted.  This means any of those listed on the Detroit Mercy libraries website are good sources. See the Tools for Assessing Journal Credibility tab for resources that will assist in assessing journals.

Students: If uncertain about a source ask a librarian or your professor.

Faculty: Ask a knowledgeable mentor or a librarian if a journal seems dubious.

THI 322 at NCSU: Royal Society

These are websites put up by entities which claim to be legitimate peer-reviewed journals, but do not provide the editorial services advertised.

Disreputable journals are adept at mimicry and may appear at first to be a real peer-reviewed or scholarly journal site. Here are some ways to tell if you are looking at such a site:

• Publish journals which are improbable combinations of disciplines.
• Use spam to solicit papers.
• Publish papers which have already been published elsewhere.
• Website has false or very little contact information.
• Promise peer-review and publication "the next day" or some other unlikely time frame
• List members of the editorial board who may not actually be on the board
• Have 'sales' on the cost of publishing articles.
• Misspellings and/or bad grammar.
• Tout non-existant impact factors. (Impact factors are only calculated for journals indexed in the Citation Indexes, which is only a portion of all journals published.)

Other cautions:

These journals are picked up by Google Scholar, so be aware.

Hymenopus coronatus (Orchid Mantis)

Steps to determine whether a journal or publisher is credible include:

1. Visit the journal's website. Some publishers' websites appear professionally created and managed, however closer inspection may reveal poor design, typographical errors, and grammatical errors that would not appear on a reputable publisher's site. Be cautious of those that provide only web contact forms.
    
2. Review the journal's scope as described on the website. Most questionable journals have scopes so broad that they will publish articles on nearly any topic.
    
3. Check that a journal's editorial board lists recognized experts with full affiliations. Contact some of board members and ask about their experience with the journal or publisher.
    
4. Examine articles that appear in the journal and judge their caliber. Predatory publishers are not interested in producing journal articles that demonstrate excellent research or that offer compelling arguments, and rarely engage in screening or quality control.
    
5. Check the peer-review policy. Unscrupulous publishers promise a quick peer-review turnaround. Considering the peer-review process used by reputable journals can take months, a publisher that states their peer-review system takes as little as 21 days is either rushing the process or not doing any peer-review at all.
    
6. Check for the author's publication fee schedule. If it does not appear on the website or if the publisher states it will notify authors of the fee after their papers are accepted for publication, the publisher is likely charging excessively high author fees. Legitimate journal publishers make this information easy to find on their website.
    
7. Be wary of e-mail invitations to submit to journals or to become editorial board members.
    
8. Find out whether the journal is a member of an industry association that vets its members, such as the Directory of Open Access Journals (www.doaj.org) or the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (www.oaspa.org).