Faculty Scholarly Publishing

Definitions & Terms 

Predatory Publishing

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.​

-University of Arizona Libraries​

In Scientific Publishing, Predatory publishing, also write-only publishing or deceptive publishing, is an exploitative academic publishing business model that involves charging publication fees to authors without checking articles for quality and legitimacy, and without providing editorial and publishing services that legitimate academic journals provide, whether open access or not.

-Predatory Reports (predatoryreports.org)

Vanity Presses 

A vanity press or vanity publisher, sometimes also subsidy publisher, is a publishing house where anyone can pay to have a book published. The term vanity press is often used pejoratively, implying that an author who uses such a service is publishing out of vanity.​

Academic Vanity Press: Looks to collect Open Access publications and print anthologies for proprietary gain. ​

Hijacked Journal or Publisher 

The brandjacking of a legitimate academic journal by a malicious third party. Typically, the imposter journal sets up a fraudulent website for the purpose of offering scholars the opportunity to rapidly publish their research online for a fee.

-Wikipedia

Resources to Avoid Predatory/Vanity Publications 

The following resources can assist you in with determining whether a publisher or journal is vanity and/or predatory. Think. Check. Submit is a checklist of things to do when submitting to a publisher you are not very familiar with. Use Ulrichsweb to look up journals that are legitimate. DOAJ is a directory of legitimate open access journals. Beall's List and Predatory Reports are blogging sites that list journals which could potentially be predatory. These sites will also list publishers that are potentially brandjacking, hijacked, or predatory. 

Characteristics of Predatory Publishers & Journals  

Predatory Publishers and Journals share a number of characteristics that serve as potential warnings that a journal or publisher is predatory. Below is a list with examples. 

Predatory Characteristics

1.) Website and/or Communications Contain Spelling, Grammatical Errors, or Broken English/Other Language. 

• Website for journal does not contain links to a searchable index and lists of articles are hard or impossible to find. 
• Guarantee of acceptance and/or unrealistic publication timeline. 
• Solicitation emails are received mentioning your past publications. 
• Editors are NOT listed.
• Websites are outdated.

2.) Rapid and Suspicious Peer-Review Policies

• Peer-Review policy is not listed or promises a short, unrealistic timeline. 
• Peer-Review suggests adding specific articles/authors/publishers/journals. 
• No retraction policy is documented. 

• Names of reviewers are listed without permission and without their knowledge. This also occurs with editors. Typically false address and contact information is given.

3.) Journal/Publisher Output is Immense 

• Abundance of 'special issues.'
• Heavy number of self-citations and intra-publisher citations. 
• Published article output has increased drastically over a period of 2 to 5 years.

4.) False/Fraudulent or Non-Existent Bibliometrics Listed

• Website lists unfamiliar bibliometrics instead of impact factors or other mainstream bibliometrics. 

5.) Solicitation & Low APCs 

• Solicitation emails are sent to researchers that list previous publications. 
• Low Article Processing Charges are listed (~$100 to $300). 
• Journal or book editors ask to publish your existing publications in anthologies for print/digital access.