Our university has a list of accreditated journals and always warns researchers about predatory journals. So we always refer to that list when considering publications.

You can find the characteristics of predatory journals in the following link:

https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/what-is-a-predatory-journal/article21039351.ece

Our University maintain a list of good journals with proper indexing, coverage and ethics. We also have a strict policy on paid journals. We don't give any credit for the publication in the paid journals and the articles published a journal not included in our list. We also review the worldwide blacklisted journals and revisit our list to ensure the authenticity of our list.Also, we update the journal list regular basis to keep it current. We advice students to strictly obey the rules related to publication.

These are the few steps we are taking.

Our university has a list of accreditated journals and always warns researchers about predatory journals. So we always refer to that list when considering publications.

A recent article from Nature discusses at length on predatory journals and came out with a consensus on the definition of predatory journals and their common characteristics. Please go through the link given below. https://www.nature.com/magazine-assets/d41586-019-03759-y/d41586-019-03759-y.pdf

The following link from Nature explains how India is fighting against predatory journals:

https://www.nature.com/magazine-assets/d41586-019-02023-7/d41586-019-02023-7.pdf

Alain Mwamba Mukendi thanks for your comment. please how did your university arrive at the list of accredited journals.

There is a DHET accredited list that can be found online and downloaded.

Thanks

Borrowing from researcher César Jiménez-Yanez:

Regularly predatory journals have the following characteristics:

• Send emails regularly inviting to publish
• They offer impact factor and show medals and high indicators
• Offer to publish in a very short time (days or weeks)
• They are multidisciplinary, that is, they accept jobs from all areas and disciplines.
• Charge to be published (high costs)
• They do not detail the arbitration process (sometimes they do not even mention it)
• Present the DOI or Crossref logo as something "important"
• The name of the magazine regularly looks like a serious academic journal
• They are not affiliated with COPE (https://publicationethics.org/)

You can check the ISSN of the magazine in the MIAR database http://miar.ub.edu/

You can check the ISSN of the magazine in the SCIMAGO database https://www.scimagojr.com/

You can check the ISSN of the magazine in the Clarivate Analytics database http://mjl.clarivate.com/

Next, researcher Ziaul Haque Munim made a video on predatory journal:

https://youtu.be/VhaI-CoEHwE

Worth seeing it...

In India, the University Grants Commission (UGC), a statutory organization of the Government of India for the coordination, determination and maintenance of standards of teaching, examination and research in university education, has formed a Consortium for Academic and Research Ethics (CARE) among other objectives to prevent publications in predatory and dubious journals. UGC-CARE List has two groups of journals as shown below.

UGC-CARE List Group I

Journals found qualified through UGC-CARE protocols

UGC-CARE List Group II

Journals indexed in globally recognized databases such as Web of Science and Scopus

The list is available from the link: https://ugccare.unipune.ac.in/Apps1/User/WebA/CAREList

It seems that it is increasingly difficult to recognize predatory journals and that some of them make increasing efforts not to appear such and not all appear in the lists of predatory journals. However there are some signs (some of them where already mentioned by Anton Vrdoljak :

1. If you receive an email from a journal in which you have never published, referring to an paper of yours that has nothing to do with the subject of the magazine (for example I have received invitations to publish in medical journals because they supposedly liked an paper mine about art history).

2. If the webpage of the publisher doesn’t focus on the published papers, but of the benefits to publish with them (some years ago it was more like: “We have an ISSN!”, but now it has become more sophisticated). Often they offer to publish very fast.

3. If the webpage of the publisher looks like they publish hundreds of journals on any given topic, and in every topic there are many issues every year you should ask if good scientific production can be possible in these industrial quantities.

4. Look at some of the papers published – many of them show a lack of critical review by containing many spelling errors.

5. And, of course : High fees are charged - as the ultimate goal of predatory journals is your money, it will be difficult to camouflage this issue even in the future.