The growth of Open Access publishing has a downside: the rise of so-called Predatory publishers. These publishers abuse the fact that authors typically must pay Article Processing Charges (APCs) to publish Open Access. Predatory publishers charge APCs but do not provide the proper editorial or peer review services. A predatory journal may send pushy emails asking you to publish in their journal or to serve as an editor. Other signs of predatory journals or publishers include unclear or absent peer review, lack of transparency, and misleading indexing and statistics.
This checklist can help you to judge whether an OA journal is trustworthy:
- Is the journal listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)?
- Is the book listed in the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)?
- Use the checklist Think, Check, Submit.
- Has the publisher signed on to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)?
- NOTE: If the publisher has not signed on, this doesn’t necessarily mean that is a predatory publisher. Not every high-quality publisher is a member of COPE.
- Check whether the publisher gives realistic information about the time required for peer review.
- Does the journal have a recent Journal Impact Factor in Journal Citations Reports (JCR)?
- Are there multiple posts about the journal or publisher on Retraction Watch?
Be aware that avoiding untrustworthy journals is not a simple task. Even widely-accepted journals can be of substandard quality, and a journal or publisher that appears reliable at first may, upon closer inspection, not seem quite right. Take care that you check multiple items from the list above. For more information and guidelines to help you have greater certainty when choosing a journal, see the ‘Guide on predatory and questionable publishing’. If you’re unsure, we’re available to answer your questions via openaccess [at] ubn.ru.nl (openaccess[at]ubn[dot]ru[dot]nl).