About Publishing

Warning Signs: Editors and Editorial/Review Boards

• The publisher is listed as an editor across all its journals.
• There is no editorial or review board or the review board is too small (varies).
• Editor and board member affiliation, qualifications, and or specialization is not disclosed.
• Board members are fake or are listed without permission.

Warning Signs: Business Practices

• Publication fees are not clearly stated or easy to locate.
• Has no plan to ensure content will remain available if the journal or publisher cease operation (i.e., no preservation plan).
• Only publishes locked PDF files (this makes it difficult to analyze papers for plagiarism).
• Does not provide adequate contact information.
• Charges an open access publishing fee while also requiring transfer of copyright.
• Solicits submissions through deceptive ('spam') marketing emails.
• The publisher does not have membership in publishing organizations, such as OASPA, ICMJE, or COPE, which have established ethical publishing guidelines and expectations.

Warning Signs: Ethics and Integrity

• Lacks adequate policies to prevent and address misconduct such as authorship disputes, conflicts of interest, copyright infringement, plagiarism, image manipulation, etc.
• Journal names and/or branding is intentionally misleading.
• Journal title and/or branding should not imply association with unrelated organizations, publishers, or journals.
• If a journal uses the name of a country or geographic region in its title then it should match the journal's scope and/or and physical location (e.g. Brazilian journals should be based in Brazil and/or focused on research done in, or about, Brazil).
• Makes false claims about journal indexing or prestige indicators (e.g. indexing, impact measures, etc.).
  • Indexing examples: Google Scholar, Web of Science, PubMed (open access), Scopus, etc.
  • Impact measure examples: Journal Impact Factor, scite Index (open access), SJR (open access), etc.