Predatory Publishing

What is predatory publishing?

In December 2019 issue of Nature defined predatory publishing: 

“Predatory journals and publishers are entities that prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship and are characterized by false or misleading information, deviation from best editorial and publication practices, a lack of transparency, and/or the use of aggressive and indiscriminate solicitation practices.” (Grudniewicz et al, 2019)

Deceit is the defining characteristic of academic scams.

Common Tactics of Predatory Publishers: 

• Establishing an online presence with web pages filled with bogus journals. On the surface, many of these websites appear to be legitimate. However, closer scrutiny reveals the articles to be plagiarized, completely fake.
• Advertising fake metrics such as Impact Factor and CiteScore on their website and in emails to prospective authors.
• Indicate they are indexed in Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed etc. when they are not. 
• List editors for their journals who either did not agree to be an editor or use fake names to populate the editorial board.
• Advertising expedited peer review to get your article published quicker.
• Soliciting you to edit a special theme issue in your area of research. They use this as a way to convince you to recruit your colleagues.
• Engaging in questionable business practices such as charging a fee for withdrawaling an article.

Evaluating Scholarly Journals Infographic by Allen Press via FrontMatter (CC BY ND NC 3.0) 

Hijacked Journals

Hijacked journals, also known as cloned journals, impersonate legitimate journals by adopting their titles, ISSNs, and other metadata. Occasionally, a Predatory Publisher will acquire a legitimate journal and continue publication without clearly notifying the authors and readers of the change in ownership. Retraction Watch, in collaboration with Anna Abalkina have developed a hijacked journal checker.

Research paper mill

Paper mills are the systematic production of fake manuscripts, often plagiarized or written with automatic systems like generative AI LLMs.  Authorships in these manuscripts are sold to researchers.   

For additional information on how papermills function see:  R.A.K. Richardson, S.S. Hong, J.A. Byrne, T. Stoeger, & L.A.N. Amaral, The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 122 (32) e2420092122, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2420092122 (2025).