A Guide to Identifying Predatory Journals and Publishers - Checklist

This checklist is designed to guide researchers and authors in identifying potential predatory journals and/or publishers. Predatory journals and publishers are a concerning phenomenon in academic publishing.

Identifying potentially predatory, poor quality or disreputable publishers / journals / conferences is not straightforward. Evidence of some of the negative factors included here may apply to well- established, reputable publishers / journals / conferences. Some of the information on communications from and web sites of disreputable publishers / journals / conferences may be fabricated, misleading or otherwise false, to boost their credibility and reputation to unsuspecting authors.

The checklist is presented as a series of questions under eight different headings. Sometimes an answer will add to the evidence that this journal may be disreputable or potentially predatory. Sometimes an answer will support the evidence that the journal or publisher is reputable. Although the questions are mainly about academic journals, the checklist can be equally applied to fake conferences and predatory publishers.

Collected by Ethical Publishing and Dissemination Working Group, European Network for Academic Integrity