What is a predatory journal?

Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado in Denver, is often credited with coining the term “predatory publishers,” which he described as organizations that “publish counterfeit journals to exploit the open-access model in which the author pays. These predatory publishers are dishonest and lack transparency. They aim to dupe researchers, especially those inexperienced in scholarly communication. (Elmore & Weston, 2020) 

Beall's list was no longer curated as of 2017, but it originally listed journals that were determined to be problematic in terms of the seriousness of their content or in terms of their intentionally predatory nature. Remember: There are a number of concerns that must be considered when determining if a journal is predatory or not. These include (but are not limited to):

• Disciplines differ in size and scope of literature, therefore simple bibliometric measurements (e.g. Impact Factor, H-Index) will not always tell you without a doubt if a journal is predatory. Some new or smaller journals within a discipline may indeed have lower statistics. This does not necessarily mean that small journal is predatory.
• The point of a predatory journal is to exploit researchers and make money. That said, just because a journal asks for an APC (author processing charge) does not mean it is predatory. The gold model of Open Access charges authors to publish articles to cover the cost to publishers and make the article accessible to everyone on the internet, rather than keeping it behind a paywall. This is a business model for legitimate journal publishers. That said, predatory journals will often demand outrageous fees that do not reflect the prestige of their publications, or offer to "waive fees" for publishing an article that is NOT open access. 
• There is a documented ethnocentric bias in journal assessment in which individual journals may be deemed to be less important due to language barriers, lack of publishing infrastructure in place of origin, or other factors (Svensson & Wood, 2007). It is important to realize that a journal is not predatory simply because it is not well-known, published in a language other than english, or lacks access to large publishing infrastructure in the US or UK. 

Please use the resources on this page to determine the legitimacy of any journal in which you intend to publish. You may also reach out directly to the graduate school, or the OER and Scholarly Communications Librarian for direct support.

References

Elmore SA, Weston EH. (2020) Predatory Journals: What They Are and How to Avoid Them. Toxicol Pathol. 2020 Jun;48(4):607-610. doi: 10.1177/0192623320920209. 

Svensson, G., & Wood, G. (2007). Ethnocentricity in academic marketing journals: a study of authors, reviewers, editorial boards and editors. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 25(3), 252-270.