I have had several approaches from such journals but have never tried publishing anything in them. My advice to my junior colleagues is to stick to well-known journals in their field. They soon recognise the names of researchers in good active groups and if you are thinking of publishing in a journal you are not familiar with always check the editorial board and past papers to see if you recognise acknowledged experts. If not, I would avoid.

These journals are genuinely "parasitic," in that they use the academic publishing system to derive a profit, while doing no good to the system. They often imitate real journals with similar titles, all trying to get a few unwitting scientists to send them a manuscript. These journals prey particularly on scientists working in developing countries who may be struggling to build a CV, and end up wasting both money and a good paper on a fake journal. 

Unfortunately, Jeffrey Beall's list of predatory journals, which was controversial, but provided a CRUCIAL resource in documenting these problems, has been removed from the WWW. No real detail as to why it was taken down, but it is well known that Beall had been sued by some of the parasites at several points in recent years. So the best course of action is to check with the Directory of Open Access Journals (https://doaj.org/) as a reputable source of information. More generally, one should probably publish in journals that are publishing papers from which one cites papers. 

Thank you much dear Brenda Jacono, that is indeed true, a prey is usually hunt down for its weakness by the predator, like wise these journals are targeting those who are desperate to publish. 

Regards

Excellent piece of advice there Dr Dominic E Reeve, It is always good to do a proper background check before taking the leap than regretting later.

Regards

Dear Dr. Andrew Townsend Peterson, I totally agree there, true to the word they are parasites that live on those researchers who fall prey to their vicious trap. And as you said the WWW took down the list which is a shame, as someone rightly said, truth come out with a price and here it seems like Jeffrey Beall had to pay the price.

Regards

 Thank you much for the insight and link for further read dear Chalamalla Srinivas 

Regards 

I do agree that "Newer scholars from developing countries are said to be especially at risk...", but my attention tends to be focused on the circumstances that are creating this risk. Let's face it, if your research is situated in a non-Western, developing country context, or if you are not a native speaker of English, it's very likely that you will get the impression that a higher bar is set for you by many or even most of the journals characterised above as "legitimate journals". Journal publishers, editors and reviewers have to think very hard about how to be more inclusive. If progress towards inclusivity is perceived as too slow, or even not happening, yes, many authors will turn to predatory journals.

Hello Dr Roger Atkinson, very true sir, the soft ones are always the easy targets as mentioned, and yes as you aptly quoted people from developing nations and who lack skills in basic english language find it hard to get their research accepted in a reputed/ legitimate journal. I feel since we are exploding with good researches and articles such reputed journals should think about increasing the frequency or bringing out more special issues so that the waiting period can be minimized, doesn't mean they have to bring down their quality.

Regards

It is indeed true that young unexperienced researchers do fall prey to such journals. There must be some regulatory bodies to approve a new journal for publishing the research. I have seen almost every university /institution coming up with their own journal. It might be confusing for a person who has just stepped in this field to decide for which journal he should go.

So, if we have certain regulatory bodies which give approval / ban the journals which do not publish quality/authentic result, the young researchers would benefit. We will have quality research and few research, which is always better than flooded research published in "n " no. of journals. for eg. if the journal is indexed in pubmed ...But recently, I came across few journals indexed in pubmed, asking for APF nearly 1000$...But none of the articles published were novel and informative...

Hello Dr. Megha, very valid point, there should be a standard body to evaluate quality of journals and based on that they should be termed to exist or exile, but sadly corruption seems to have no boundaries, worthless journals are finding ways to get themselves cited in pubmed and above that as you said they charge exorbitant publication fees in the name of open access and self funding excuses.

Hope some reforms are made in the near future regarding these issues for the better

Regards

It needs a installed informational website  program to support and safeguard people's publication ideas 

Dear Peter Schaefer , thank you for you inputs.

Regards

Dear Prof Pyne, what you have mentioned makes a lot of sense, but what if they are armature researchers who have been tricked. These predatory journals sometimes looks more original than the genuine ones. Under this condition if that person was a  victim, further taking away his incentives might put him under a more stressful condition and that might end as a negative motivation and a career destroyer. Do you think there is such a possibility?

Regards

Dear all, I agree with you. Not only scientists, but also governmental and private scientific bodies and agencies from developing countries are becoming the victim of these practices. It is very common that scientists are striving to get their papers published as soon as possible and often do not take enough care on the quality. In turn the evaluators of dissertations and projects from agencies also often do not make difference between fake and high quality journal papers. World scientific community needs to undertake measures to increase the quality of publications. To my opinion the best solution will be the hiring of highly experienced scientists during the evaluation process, who have a potential to provide reliable evaluation.

I believe most librarians and heads of publications departments should do what Jeffrey Beall did for his institution - blacklisting suspect journals is very helpful to early and mid-career researchers.  Scholars the world over now talk of this list because of Beall's thoughtful response to curb the vice perpetuated by predatory journals.

Dear Derek Pyne, i agree to you prof, and that is all i meant, once or twice should be acceptable, beyond that it becomes a deleterious habit both for the organization and the researcher if the person keeps on holding on to such habits, and rewards I meant were not as grants or other financial aids, it was subjected only to incentives / promotion at work.

Regards

Dear Bakhtiyor Karimov sir, precisely, its not just individual researches who are at risk, but sir if the researcher is not getting any financial aid for his work, will it not be an extra burden to hire a expert, if the expert is voluntarily willing to collaborate then it would be the best practice, but i hardly feel that as a feasible possibility. The issue in hand is mostly because of the absence of a regulatory mechanism to control the quality of the journals present. If that is addressed a lot of issues might get solved.

Regards.

Dear Carolyne L. Awino, I totally agree that was the best practice that was ever made towards curbing the menace, but unfortunately it has been taken down a legal notice has been slapped on him by many of the publishers who were named in that list. Between do you have a working link for that list ? would be helpful.

Regards

Dear Sudeep C. B.,

Thank you for your feedback.  Indeed no one wishes to spend their lifetime savings fighting relentless legal battles,so I totally understand why Beall had to pull down the list.  The list however triggered the much needed discourse on scholarly publication; and academia shall forever be indebted to him.  Thankfully, the list was stored in various formats by interested scholars.  Attached herein are materials that may be of interest to you, as per your request.  I hope you know that there are certain journals on this list which are not necessarily predatory.  These materials(attachments) were generously shared with me by one Prof. Aamir Raoof Memon from Pakistan.

Thank you much for the link attachments Dear Carolyne L. Awino, I am attaching a link to a new topi that I have posted regarding the same as an extended question, your insights would be of much help and please share so that more experts can put in their opinion too and help others who might be in need for directions.

Regards

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Jeffrey_Bealls_List-An_open_discussion_on_the_most_controversial_yet_one_of_the_crucial_step_in_curbing_predatory_journals_right_or_wrong

Hello all,

Found this interesting article, thought will share it here. Please find the full article in the link below.

Abstract

Background

A negative consequence of the rapid growth of scholarly open access publishing funded by article processing charges is the emergence of publishers and journals with highly questionable marketing and peer review practices. These so-called predatory publishers are causing unfounded negative publicity for open access publishing in general. Reports about this branch of e-business have so far mainly concentrated on exposing lacking peer review and scandals involving publishers and journals. There is a lack of comprehensive studies about several aspects of this phenomenon, including extent and regional distribution.

Methods

After an initial scan of all predatory publishers and journals included in the so-called Beall’s list, a sample of 613 journals was constructed using a stratified sampling method from the total of over 11,000 journals identified. Information about the subject field, country of publisher, article processing charge and article volumes published between 2010 and 2014 were manually collected from the journal websites. For a subset of journals, individual articles were sampled in order to study the country affiliation of authors and the publication delays.

Results

Over the studied period, predatory journals have rapidly increased their publication volumes from 53,000 in 2010 to an estimated 420,000 articles in 2014, published by around 8,000 active journals. Early on, publishers with more than 100 journals dominated the market, but since 2012 publishers in the 10–99 journal size category have captured the largest market share. The regional distribution of both the publisher’s country and authorship is highly skewed, in particular Asia and Africa contributed three quarters of authors. Authors paid an average article processing charge of 178 USD per article for articles typically published within 2 to 3 months of submission.

Conclusions

Despite a total number of journals and publishing volumes comparable to respectable (indexed by the Directory of Open Access Journals) open access journals, the problem of predatory open access seems highly contained to just a few countries, where the academic evaluation practices strongly favor international publication, but without further quality checks.

Keywords

Open access Scientific publishing

Good day!

Regards

Sudeep

https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-015-0469-2

Thank you Prof Gaurav Kumar... I found this old one an interesting read there.. 

Good day! 

https://doajournals.wordpress.com/2017/04/20/india-leads-in-gold-open-access-publishing-fake-or-genuine/

Read below article:

Predatory vs Legitimate Publishing And Its Consequences: A Review

http://www.qqml.net/index.php/qqml/article/view/705