We have explored various ways to distinguish between predatory journals and legitimate ones, including analyzing peer reviews and ratings from accredited organizations. A common method for spotting fake journals seems to be less discussed. Please read an email invitation below from one of these journals before I continue:
Dear Doctor,
The following message was sent by the journal on the date of 10 March 2025.
You failed to receive this message, or intentionally you are not responding (sorry if I am wrong).
Kindly request your immediate attention to this email and respond within 24 hours to end it smoothly.
We anticipate your prompt reply to prevent reminders.
Regards,
Michael Allen
What do you think of the email invitation above? My view of the implicit message within these numerous invitations, which I receive an average of three to five daily, is that, ‘Look, we know you know we are fake, but just respond to our insistent junk mail, and we will stop bothering you.’
I think these fake journals are more desperate than ever, and since they are persistent in their approach, we also need to be vigilant in cautioning ourselves to be wary of engaging with them.
Unfortunately, some of us may STILL fall prey, so since YOU also receive such emails, please share your experience and your opinion regarding my call for an aggressive approach to naming and shaming these fake journals.
Peter Breuer Thank you for your response. Yes, they utilise standard rubrics, typically marked by the grammatical errors you noted. However, these emails also contain trends that assist us in identifying the correct options, which is the focus of my post. Currently, there is a method they are implementing- a warning to cease persistent emails, only once the recipient acknowledges them. This warning (along with constant reminders) should be interpreted very differently from the gentle nudges we all receive from legitimate publishing sources.
I am still all about the 'threat' predatory journals include in their email invitations. There is a tweak I have just noticed regarding the threats in the emails I put forward earlier. They're a bit more polite, I should say:
Dear Doctor,
We tried to contact you several times, but since you never responded, we'd like to do so once more as a politeness.
For the new edition, we are missing one article. Can you please help us out by contributing an article to this issue of the journal by June 30, 2025, at the latest?
Please submit a research article, review article, mini-review, or case study. If you have short notice, we believe that a two-page paper will not be too time-consuming for someone of your caliber.
Please submit your manuscript as an attachment to this email.
The acknowledgment of this invitation is requested.
Kind regards,
Michael
For the record, this is the very first time I have noticed the politeness in the request to respond (different from the threat to continue when no response is given), but from the same predatory journal.
And if you ask me, I think these predatory journals, just like we are doing here, have their antennae up high to discern how we are sorting them out from the lot. Therefore, we can never go wrong in sharing these tiny characteristics of their ilk for easy identification!