Predatory and Fake Scientific Journals/Publishers

 Predatory and Fake Scientific Journals/Publishers

In recent times some publishers are intensively exploiting the model of open access publishing. During the last several years, studies have shown that there was a substantial increase in the number of fake publishers and hijacked journals. These cyber criminals make money by stealing the identities of legitimate journals and collecting the article processing charges on the papers that are submitted. This is all accomplished by a well-developed framework that includes web development steps, intensive e-mail marketing and victim selections.

Fake publishers and impact factors (IF) indicate an urgent need to evaluate the methods that are currently used to assess academic research. Doing a thorough retrospective assessment of journals and publishers is definitely an urgent need in today’s academic world. Also, if an author is considering publishing a research work in a scientific journal that is characterized as “reputable journal” there are few crucial things to consider following the pre-submission process such as:

• Have any of the colleagues from authors respective institution read, reviewed or published in that specific scientific journal?
• Where is the journal indexed? Can it be found via databases which stands as usual tool to access, use or find specific scientific information?
• Is it associated with a scholarly society familiar to the author?
• Are there any reliable metrics associated with the journal (traditional or alternative)?
• Who is the editor? Who is on the editorial board? Are the members of the editorial board familiar to the author itself? Is there any available information about them?

• Does the scientific journal come with the regular trappings of a serial publication (e.g. ISSN’s, DOI’s, etc)?