Dear Femi Adekunle Balogun

One of the most important features of predatory journals is that they are profit-oriented organizations regardless of the scientific level. Although, some of them may not be so bad.

All the best

Repeated spamming, odd names, overly familiar communications and sometimes odd editor names.

Thank you Dr Neil Dagnall for your contribution.

What is a predatory journal? A scoping review (Cobey et al., 2018)

Background: There is no standardized definition of what a predatory journal is, nor have the characteristics of these journals been delineated or agreed upon. In order to study the phenomenon precisely a definition of predatory journals is needed. The objective of this scoping review is to summarize the literature on predatory journals, describe its epidemiological characteristics, and to extract empirical descriptions of potential characteristics of predatory journals.

Methods: We searched five bibliographic databases: Ovid MEDLINE, Embase Classic + Embase, ERIC, and PsycINFO, and Web of Science on January 2 nd, 2018. A related grey literature search was conducted March 27 th, 2018. Eligible studies were those published in English after 2012 that discuss predatory journals. Titles and abstracts of records obtained were screened. We extracted epidemiological characteristics from all search records discussing predatory journals. Subsequently, we extracted statements from the empirical studies describing empirically derived characteristics of predatory journals. These characteristics were then categorized and thematically grouped.  

Results: 920 records were obtained from the search. 344 of these records met our inclusion criteria. The majority of these records took the form of commentaries, viewpoints, letters, or editorials (78.44%), and just 38 records were empirical studies that reported empirically derived characteristics of predatory journals. We extracted 109 unique characteristics from these 38 studies, which we subsequently thematically grouped into six categories: journal operations, article, editorial and peer review, communication, article processing charges, and dissemination, indexing and archiving, and five descriptors.   

Conclusions: This work identified a corpus of potential characteristics of predatory journals. Limitations of the work include our restriction to English language articles, and the fact that the methodological quality of articles included in our extraction was not assessed. These results will be provided to attendees at a stakeholder meeting seeking to develop a standardized definition for what constitutes a predatory journal.

Keywords: scholarly publishing, open access, predatory journals, predatory publishers, illegitimate journals, peer review, reporting quality

Cobey KD, Lalu MM, Skidmore B, Ahmadzai N, Grudniewicz A, Moher D. What is a predatory journal? A scoping review. F1000Res. 2018;7:1001. Published 2018 Jul 4. doi:10.12688/f1000research.15256.2

Article What is a predatory journal? A scoping review

Bibliometric characteristics of predatory journals in pediatrics (Kokol et al., 2018)

" To the Editor: In the past decade, scientific publishing was characterized with the open-access model, unfortunately with the side effect of the appearance of the so-called predatory journals. These predatory journals caused a serious problem to the integrity of medical research, due to rising retraction rates, irreproducible results, and a flood of low quality publications(1). Features of predatory journals are an extremely quick, non existing or unclear peer-review process (sometimes less than one week), false credibility of the editorial board, less than five members of the editorial board, lack of or falsification of institutional affiliations, homepages containing spelling errors, bogus impact factors, e-mail spam, small number of published papers and smaller publication and processing fees(2). To help researchers identify predatory journals, some webpages maintain the lists of possible predatory journals(3, 4). The field of pediatrics is also a victim of this latest trend. While the archived Beale list(3) contains just two, the BHI Predatory Journal list(4) includes 26 suspicious pediatric journals. Interestingly, the two journals from the Beale list are not included in the BHI list; however, all the journals in the BHI list are published by suspicious publishers contained in the Beale list. None of the suspicious journals are indexed in Medline, but two of them are indexed in Scopus" (Kokol et al., 2018).

Kokol, P., Završnik, J., Žlahtič, B. et al. Bibliometric characteristics of predatory journals in pediatrics. Pediatr Res 83, 1093–1094 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/pr.2018.54

https://www.nature.com/articles/pr201854

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Which_are_the_characteristics_of_predatory_journals_in_biomedical_sciences

https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1912/1912.10228.pdf

Pay n publish...Rapid publishing...No peer review even though they mention that there is...No indexing...not reputed publishers...Fake JIFs n etc.

Dear Femi Adekunle Balogun ,following links will be helpful for you,

https://www.enago.com/academy/identifying-predatory-journals-using-evidence-based-characteristics/

https://beallslist.net/how-to-recognize-predatory-journals/

http://mdanderson.libanswers.com/faq/206446

Please see the link below.

https://microblogging.infodocs.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/s11019-016-9740-3.pdf

Hi

I think that Predatory journals are a global threat.

Article What is a predatory journal? A scoping review

These journals has no requirement of publication

Thank you Dr Mohammed Deep for the link. It is resourceful.

Thank you Prof. Evans Emmanuel for your contributions and the resourceful link. I really appreciate it.

Thank you Dr D A Gayan Nayanajith for your contribution.

Thanks Dr Basuki Wasis for your contribution.

Thank you Dr Praneeth Silva for your contribution and the resourceful link.

Thank you Drs Arvind Singh, Rasha Shakir Nima, Ihab Alfadhel for you contributions and the academic links.

They keep sending you same emails over and over inviting you for article submission.

Always beware of stand-alone journals! Many of them are suspicious.

Thank you Dr Naser Ahmed Elsawy for the link.

Rapid acceptance of research papers, demanding money for publication, and not displaying research papers to real residents

Thank you Dr Shakir Tuleab for your contribution.

I hope predatory journal is a global threat everywhere. İn additıon this is a predatory journal most of money hunters. I can not say that hunter journals have contributed to many academies. As researchers, we should choose journals that make international reliable publications such as Elsevier, Wiley Online, Science Direct, which have browsers like Crossref. Femi Adekunle Balogun

Dear Femi Adekunle Balogun, no renowned peer-reviewed journal will ever send you e-mails "begging" for contributions. Any submission to a predatory journal is not only a waste of time but also hurts you scientific reputation.

What a good contribution, Prof. Frank T. Edelmann. Thanks so much for your pictorial approach.

Most of these journals are predatory and its better to avoid them

Femi Adekunle Balogun

You have to avoid the following publisher institutes :

https://predatoryjournals.com/publishers/

Here the list of the fake journals"

https://predatoryjournals.com/journals/#B

Also you have to be careful about these journals:

https://predatoryjournals.com/hijacked/

Dear Femi Adekunle Balogun , I will share to you some websites that can help in avoiding predators, which was also shared to me. Kindly check these:

1. A similar question in research gate, check to see some similar answers. https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_can_I_check_for_predatory_journals

2. http://mdanderson.libanswers.com/faq/206446

3. https://www.rxcomms.com/blog/6-ways-spot-predatory-journal/

4. https://libguides.bgsu.edu/predatoryjournals

5. Article Identifying Predatory or Pseudo-Journals

6. https://instr.iastate.libguides.com/predatory/id

7. https://beallslist.net/how-to-recognize-predatory-journals/

8. If they are not listed in this lists: https://portal.issn.org/

Some of the attributes of predatory journals include:

1. Have questionable peer review processes, if any.

2. Are not indexed in bibliographic databases such as MEDLINE®, CINAHL®, and Scopus®.

3. Do not provide typical publishing services such as quality control and archiving (for preservation of the content).

4. Make claims on their journal websites that are not true.

Dear Femi Adekunle Balogun and Marcelino Lunag Jr, in addition to this rather important thread, you may want to check out the following discussion on predatory journals as well:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_to_eliminate_predatory_journals

Dear Femi Adekunle Balogun

One of the most important features of predatory journals is that they are profit-oriented organizations regardless of the scientific level. Although, some of them may not be so bad.

All the best

The most common attributes of predatory journals are:

1- Frequent unsolicited emails requesting for your submission for publication.

2- Speedy publication, usually within one week. In which sound peer review is doubtful.

3- Payment of publication fee is their major concern in which quality/novelty of the research work is not a priority.

Details about predatory journals has been highlighted by Mr Jeffrey bealls on:

http://Jeffreybealls.net

Best regards.

Thank you Dr Isa Baba Koki for your insightful contributions.

The predatory journal publish the article without real reviewer and quickly.

Dear Femi Adekunle Balogun it is very important to point out that your valuable research work is more or less annihilated when it is published in a predatory journal. Publishing in such journals is a complete waste of effort and time!

Thank you Drs Mazin Ali A. Ali and Frank T. Edelmann for your contributions.

They charge very cheap, though not all cheap journals are predatory. Also, there review process is mostly a day, and they constantly message for payments immediately after the one or two days bogus review of your paper

Thank you Alli Noah for your contribution.