How to identify and refrain from publishing on predatory journals

Last year, a senior colleague recalled how his five publications on so-called high impact international journals were rejected. According to him, it was after several appeals backed with evidence, his institution's assessment team reached an agreement to merge the five papers as one paper with a low score. They had found some unpardonable grammatical errors in the publications. Also, the findings made in the publications were somehow contradictory, added to the fact that the author used the same questionable methodologies such as population, sample size, data collection, among others. They wondered why the editorial teams and reviewers never detected those errors after collecting between $50 to 100 dollars to get them published. That was when it was dawned on him that he published on predatory journals.

Yes. You heard me right. 

 Predatory journals are like wait and take photographers! Experts or professors of gabage in and gabbage out. They give it to you as it is hot after collecting your money and without caring to perform the peer review processes where errors could easily be detected and corrected, where new ideas could be injected to make a study believable and perfect. 

Why you must avoid them? They impact negatively on our academic community...

1. They will dent your image 

2. Drag your reputation to mud

3. Waste your resources, your precious time and money 

4. Spread fake news

5. False information

6. Falsified data 

7. Could even lead to your demotion!

How to identify them:

1. Most of them will send you unsolicited emails; requesting for articles for publications. That does not mean that genuine journals do not send unsolicited messages. However, the difference could be in their presentations, including typographical and grammatical errors, responses and others.

2. Fake and Funny identities: Most of them  adopt names of existing journals, copy and republish their works to attract attentions of unsuspecting public. Kindly check the domain or website name, type the journal's name on any search Engine to confirm their authenticity. Some could add -, _, one alphabet or figures to confuse you into believing that they are the real journals you are craving for. 

3. Communication channels:

Some of them will respond to your emails within a second especially when you are showing interest to publish with them. Once you start asking relevant questions that could lead to unmasking their identities they may respond back to you in unprofessional way or chose not to respond to you at all. Therefore, kindly check their emails, official address, phone numbers, and those of their editorial board members.

4. Editorial Board team:

Check the editorial board team members by searching for them on Search Engines, across social media platforms and research databases such as ORCID, Google Scholar, Researchgate, etc. Send an email to any of them or even place a phone call to any of them. You can also use Archivetoday, Wayback machine and others to find out who were their board members years back or what happened.

5. Peer Review: Their peer review processes are always unknown or not clear. Hence, they can tell you that the review will take 10 to 15 days but at the end, you will receive a message yelling that your paper has been accepted for publication within 48 hours or a week. 

6. Article Publication Fees

A very good number of them do not usually disclose their Article Publication Fees/Charges (APC). Some may publish something different from what you will be required to pay. Others will rather prefer to contact you with the real amount and payment method once the paper is accepted.

7.  Indexing and Claims: They can claim that their journals are listed or indexed on Scopus, etc. Find out if these indexing were genuine, including the frequency in their publications and inclusions on the respective databases listed. It is advisable that you visit or launch the so-called databases they listed and search for their journals. Trust me, what they listed may never be found. Ordinarily, clicking on the names of databases listed on their sites should take you directly to their accounts. But it will never happen.

8. Policies: most of them do not describe their policies like copyright, retractions and corrections of already published works. That is why it is too difficult to update your papers there once you discovered some errors. 

Therefore, you must run away from predatory journals. They kill academic libidos.

That is all for today.