Predatory publishing has become a growing concern in academic publishing.

It has risen in prominence with the increased demand for Open Access. Questionable publishers exploit the charge per article system known as Article Processing Charges to make money out of the pressure to publish that dominates academic culture (publish or perish). However, contrary to legitimate OA publishers, they charge a fee but do not provide any of the services that authors would expect, like peer review and editing and will often send unsolicited emails to authors.

There is no set list or standard definition, so you will need to keep your wits about.

The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) give the following guidance:

‘the systematic for-profit publication of purportedly scholarly content…in a deceptive or fraudulent way and without any regard for quality assurance’.

Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (2023), Predatory behaviour in publication ethics, available at: publicationethics.org/news/predatory-behaviour-publication-ethics

The Librarian Jeffrey Beall had attempted to create a list of potential predatory publishers in 2015, with the recommendation to read the reviews provided and that authors should decide for themselves whether to submit their work to these publishers. An archived version of Beall's list is available, but the information might be outdated. The criteria used to put the list together considered varied aspects such as:

• The editor and staff of the press (is there a clear editorial board, is the same editor named on all the publications of this publisher).

• The way the publisher operates its business (for instance, lack of transparency on cost).

• The integrity of the publisher (use of fake impact factors, discrepancy between the mission and the name of the journal).

• Poor journal practice or standard (no clear contact, spam emails, no clear licensing policy or retraction policy...).

While there is no set list, there are several things you can do to check and assess whether a publisher is predatory:

• Use the Think Check Submit tools.
• Unsolicited emails should be treated with caution.
• Check the credentials of the publishers, editor and editorial board.
• Check for a clear statement of charges.
• Check the copyright. What rights will you retain as an author? Legitimate OA journals promote the use of Creative Commons licenses, and the author retains their rights.
• Check for indexing, for instance Scopus, Web of Science, Crossref, DOAJ (as well as those relevant for your discipline).
• Check the quality of the research already published.
• Consider the quality of the website.

The following video, produced by the Royal Society, discusses how you might guard yourself from predatory publishing.

In addition to predatory publishing, a number of other unethical practices can be found in academic publishing. Authors should be aware of these to avoid them.

Paper mills

Paper mills profit from the 'publish or perish' culture in academia. They produce papers for sale, and their activity is growing with the progress of AI. They sell authorship or papers to authors.

Hijacked journals

These journals aim to imitate well-known titles to attract submissions and exploit authors. These journals either create a counterfeit website of a legitimate journal and solicit submissions or use a very similar title to that of a well-known journal to trick authors into submitting to their journals. It is important to be mindful of unsolicited emails and to check that the journal is legitimate.