Many reputable publishers, including the Big 5, charge fees to authors and most conferences charge fees to attendees. Historically, some publishers have charged authors fees for indexing, color figures, and page charges. It is also increasingly common, especially amongst large for-profit publishers, to charge fees for Open Access publishing, often as an Article Processing Charge (APC)
A low or lack of citation metrics can mean that a journal is new or not well known. Citation metrics also very significantly across fields, with STEM journals likely to have higher metrics than journals in the humanities and social sciences. Some publications using alternative publishing models, such as E-life, have also been de-indexed when they adopted an innovative publishing model.
If the journal doesn't appear in some common indexes like Scopus or DOAJ, is not necessarily a cause for concern. This could mean that the journal is new; for example, the DOAJ requires several years of publishing activity before a journal can be listed. It could also mean that the journal did not meet the quality review performed by many indexes. Although that can be concerning, it is not in itself a sign of fraudulent activity.
There are many legitimate publishing opportunities for scholars that do not involve peer review, including publishing in professional or trade publications that are not peer reviewed. This is often done to reach the practitioner audience. Some journals only use editorial review, a common practice in Law Journals. Predatory activity is when an opportunity says it is peer-reviewed, but it is not. Watch out for deceit surrounding peer review. Real peer review takes time. When an opportunity promises peer review in a matter of a few days, that's probably a deceitful promise.
Non-Western publication houses are NOT automatically predatory, despite some evaluative sites listing geographic publication as criteria. English grammar errors on publisher or journal websites are also not an immediate indication of predatory publishing, especially when they are not from a primarily English-speaking country. Below are some links to resources for finding publishers in the Global South.
