Scholarly Communication Services - Predatory or Deceptive Publishers

Researchers have increased demands to publish and now are provided with many avenues of doing so, including open access.  These broader factors have given rise to predatory publishers,  or academic / commercial publishers that use questionable practices to solicit, review, and distribute original research. 

Open Access & The Rise of Deceptive or Predatory Publishers.  Open access publishers distribute their information with minimal or no restrictions.  They generally operate by having the costs of publishing be covered by authors who pay a fee to have their research articles published.  A drawback to this is the emergence of publishers that misuse the open access model.  Instead of freely distributing information for the benefit of creating new knowledge, deceptive publishers aim to make a profit off authors who are eager to pay for their research to be published. 

The Problem.  New and emerging research heavily relies on established knowledge to inform their studies, so the information it uses needs to be valid and accurate.   Deceptive publishers utilize questionable publishing conduct and ethics in terms of soliciting research, their editorial processes, and utilizing peer review, all of which affect the quality of information being published.  Later studies that are informed by such publications are liable to be based on flawed or inaccurate premises, and may lead to negative outcomes or be a waste of time and resources.  An additional problem with such publishers is their journals and articles may be found in established indexes and databases as PubMed, ProQuest, or others while doing a literature review.

Organizations that sponsor research noticed many of their funded studies were increasingly published in deceptive or predatory journals.  For the purposes of preserving the credibility of these studies, the U.S National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other organizations released statements to caution researchers about submitting their work to these types of journals (e.g., NOT-OD-18-011), and recommend evaluating a publication before submitting manuscripts.

Possible Solutions.  A standard "list" of predatory journals does not exist.  Although the web page Beall's List suggested attributes and attempted to identify deceptive journals, its evaluations were criticized within the academic library and publishing fields.  It was deactivated in 2018 after pending legal action. 

This Research Guide provides some specific ways to identify deceptive publishers.  A publisher can be evaluated by its attributes and other characteristics which are shown below.

A researcher will become cognizant of high impact journals, research organizations, and publishers as he or she reads more literature within their field.  However, some journals with scholarly titles may still have the attributes of a deceptive or predatory publication, so let the reader beware.

*Note: 'Deceptive' publishers is the largely accepted term synonymous with 'predatory' publishers; scholarly publishing and communication experts believe the first term accurately describes more of their attributes.

Characteristics of Deceptive Publishers

A deceptive publisher may have a combination of the following characteristics.  When considering whether or not a publication is deceptive, weigh the following since many works or publishers may possess one or more.

1. Promises of quick acceptance or peer review, often within 24 hours.
2. Aggressive, frequent, or unsolicited calls for manuscripts, usually by e-mail.
3. Exaggerated or fake bibliometrics such as Journal Impact Factor.
4. False bibliographic information such as ISSN.
5. The scope of a publication includes many unrelated topics or disciplines.
6. Sham or misrepresented editorial board.
7. False-flag or hijacked publication:  one with a similar or slight variance in publication name.  See the hijacked Jokull Journal and the actual Jokull Journal of Earth Sciences.
8. Wants an author processing charge (APC) before acceptance of manuscript.
9. Publication is deceptive about its professional, scholarly affiliations, or make them up.
10. Contact information is a general e-mail address (e.g., @gmail.com).
11. Sponsored publications:  one that is created to promote an agenda or product by a company or organization.

University of Manitoba Libraries (2018). Identifying predatory publishers [Video]. YouTube.  https://youtu.be/crDKooW_2kUBy