Jagdish - This question has been asked many times on research gate. The following criterion is very important to avoid the risk of publishing in a fake journal and to evaluate a journal's quality: 1. The first criterion to evaluate is the journal’s reputation. Is the journal published by an acclaimed publisher and how well do you and your colleagues know this journal and its editorial board members, 2. The second indicator is the journal’s credibility. This can be assessed by its physical and online presence and it indexed, 3. The third benchmark to review is the journal’s impact, evaluated by several metrics such as the impact factor (IF) etc. 4. The journal has no address or contact information other than an email address listed, 5.There are articles listed but no evidence of an editorial board to review those articles, 6.The journal quality needs careful examination e.g., spelling mistakes on the journal’s website, peer review process (single-blind, double-blind or open), accessing all archived full texts and remember that good journals don't ask for papers, 7. Lastly, the do some basic research on journal blacklists to see if this journal is listed (and confirmed) as questionable. Something else that you can do is to run the site content through text-matching tools and find out if the content has been pirated from other sites. These journals mostly ask for papers and the journal might sweeten the invitation by asking you to join the editorial board as a “valued contributor”.

To check the authenticity of the Scopus journal, visit the following link: http://scimagojr.com/journalsearch.php

Put the ISSN of the journal or its title

Thanks Dr. Manzoor Hussain for your insight to my question.

Jagdish - Manzoor is correct. This question has been asked many times. I have pasted my response to the last thread that asked it. I believe that it compliments Manzoor's valuable feedback.

Essentially, 'red flag' number 1 with predatory journals is always be very wary when any journal approaches you directly. There are some established open access journal corporations i.e. SAGE - but most people know that they are established and they mostly send out generic invitations -more based on 'do you know this journal/suite of journals exists - related to your topic area?'. If you are not sure - then Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a good site to check first. If the journal targeting you is not on there - it's another red flag. Then there are many other red flags - such as:

• Poor quality online interface.
• Minimal and/or very broad journal scope i.e. we publish almost anything.
• Poor English quality and grammatical errors.
• Check the country of origin.
• Unknown editors.
• Unknown or no editorial board and/or all based in the country of origin
• Unsophisticated online manuscript submission processes i.e. send a word document by email
• Upfront publishing charges
• Not registered or associated with any reputable professional bodies and/or citation agencies.
• Check the quality of existing articles in the journal.

Thanks Mr. Dean White head for your answer I will consider your response to identify the issue.

Please check both the journals and publisher before you submit. The list can be obtained at https://predatoryjournals.com. There are thousands of them. Check and be alert. Published Predatory Journals are not recognised for graduation nor promotion.

Any journals that needs payment and promises a super turnaround time. Check!