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Policy and Procedure Manual 2024-25 > Research > Predatory Journals

Predatory Journals

Policy

UD encourages faculty and researchers to always complete their due diligence to ensure they are publishing in reputable journals and avoiding predatory journals. 

1. Due Diligence Guidelines:

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. Check that the journal prominently displays its policy for author fees.

4. Be wary of e-mail invitations to submit to journals or to become editorial board members.

5. Read some of the journal’s published articles and assess their quality. Contact past authors to ask about their experience.

6. Check that a journal’s peer-review process is clearly described and try to confirm that a claimed impact factor is correct.

7. Find out whether the journal is a member of an industry association that vets its members.

 

2. Characteristics of Predatory Journals

1. Predatory journals often flood researchers' email inboxes with invitations to submit papers or join editorial boards. They may use official-sounding names to imitate reputable journals, creating confusion.

2. Predatory journals claim to provide quick publication timelines, sometimes as short as a few days or weeks. Legitimate peer review and editorial processes take time to ensure quality.

3. Minimal or no peer review; these journals might claim to perform peer review but either do it inadequately or skip it entirely. Legitimate journals have rigorous peer-review processes to maintain the quality of published research.

4. Low article processing charges; while high publication fees don't necessarily indicate legitimacy, extremely low fees (much lower than industry standards) can be a red flag. Predatory journals attract authors with low costs.

5. Lack of transparency; predatory journals often provide minimal information about their editorial boards, peer-review processes, and indexing status. They might list fake experts as editorial board members.

6. False indexing claims; they may claim to be indexed in reputable databases like PubMed, Scopus, or Web of Science when, in reality, they are not. Always verify a journal's indexing status independently.

7. Unsolicited manuscript submission; legitimate journals typically do not request submissions without any prior contact with the author. Predatory journals, on the other hand, often send unsolicited requests.

8. Broad scope; predatory journals often have broad subject areas, trying to attract submissions from a wide range of fields without having true expertise.

9. Unrealistic impact factor claims; they may mention high impact factors or citation metrics that are fabricated or from questionable sources.

10. Copyright and licensing issues; some predatory journals might retain copyright ownership of published articles, limiting authors' rights to their own work.

By being cautious and conducting due diligence, UD faculty and researchers can avoid submitting their work to predatory journals and contribute to the dissemination of reliable scientific knowledge.