Predatory or deceptive publishing are terms describing publishers or entities that exploit authors by charging publication fees (commonly known as article processing charges) yet don’t deliver on their promise of the editorial and publishing services (such as peer review) that are associated with legitimate publishers. Deceptive publishers typically prey on a researcher’s need to publish in order to get an academic appointment, gain promotion, or achieve tenure.
These publishers often engage in deceptive and unethical business practices and make false claims about a journal’s impact factor, indexing, high standards, and peer review.
Authors generally don't want to be exploited by an online scam, but it can happen if an author is:
(Adapted from Shamseer, L., Moher, D., Maduekwe, O., Turner, L., Barbour, V., Burch, R., Clark, J., Galipeau, J., Roberts, J., & Shea, B.J. (2017). Potential predatory and legitimate biomedical journals: can you tell the difference? A cross-sectional comparison. BMC Medicine 15(1) 28. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-017-0785-9.)
The following are positive indicators that a journal or publisher is not predatory:
The material on this webpage is adapted from the libguide Predatory Publishing, developed by Ellen Dubinsky and Ahlam Saleh and licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.