Open Access, Open Education, & More: Predatory Publishing

Prof. Jeffrey Beall, University of Colorada Denver librarian, maintains a list of potential predatory publishers and stand alone journals. Follow the links below to check if a publisher or journal has been flagged as possibly predatory.

Not sure where to publish or what journals are available in your field? Interested in publishing across multiple disciplines? Check out Ulrichsweb, a global serials directory, which lists over 300,000 publications worldwide.

In an interview with The Chronicle of Higher Education, Prof. Jeffrey Beall describes the phenomenon this way:

"Predatory open-access publishers are those that unprofessionally exploit the gold open-access model for their own profit. That is to say, they operate as scholarly vanity presses and publish articles in exchange for the author fee. They are characterized by various level of deception and lack of transparency in their operations.  For example, some publishers may misrepresent their location, stating New York instead of Nigeria, or they may claim a stringent peer-review where none really exists."

Predatory publishers may also claim to be included in directories and indexes when they are not and include faculty on their editorial boards who have not agreed to serve.

Predatory publishers began profilerating in the past few years with the increase in open access publishing, and we are now also seeing an increase in predatory conferences, some which choose a name nearly identical to an established, well-respected conference.

Check the publisher and journal on the predatory publishing lists linked to the left. 

Contact your department's Library Liaison for a second (or first) opinion about the authenticity of a publisher or journal. We're happy to help faculty identify reliable, quality scholarly publishing venues. 

Use the following checklist, provided by Declan Butler in Nature, as a guide for assessing publishers and journals:

How to perform due diligence before submitting to a journal or publisher.

• Check that the publisher provides full, verifiable contact information, including address, on the journal site. Be cautious of those that provide only web contact forms.
• Check that a journal's editorial board lists recognized experts with full affiliations. Contact some of them and ask about their experience with the journal or publisher.
• Check that the journal prominently displays its policy for author fees.
• Be wary of e-mail invitations to submit to journals or to become editorial board members.
• Read some of the journal's published articles and assess their quality. Contact past authors to ask about their experience.
• Check that a journal's peer-review process is clearly described and try to confirm that a claimed impact factor is correct.
• Find out whether the journal is a member of an industry association that vets its members, such as the Directory of Open Access Journals (www.doaj.org) or the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (www.oaspa.org). [Some questionable journals appear in directories such as DOAJ and Cabell's; we don't advise using this as your sole criteria.]
• Use common sense, as you would when shopping online: if something looks fishy, proceed with caution.
• Or contact your Librarian! We're happy to help assess journals and publishers.