Open Access Week – What are predatory publishing practices and how can you avoid them?

Lindsay Roberts – University Library Services

Publishing in journals can seem pretty complex nowadays. The number of journals out there has risen dramatically with the rise of open access publishing and the move to electronic journals has removed the limitations that used to exist with producing regular similar sized issues.

I’m sure many of you will have received unsolicited emails from journal publishers offering you the opportunity to publish, or join the editorial board, for one of their journals for a very reasonable fee. They will often offer enticing inducements like guaranteed acceptance and a quick turnaround for publication.  So, what do you do in those instances? Ignore and delete the email? Take up the opportunity? Or do you decide to investigate further before making a decision?

There are some common signs to look out for with predatory journals – they guarantee acceptance, they have no peer review, and they use misleading impact factors.  As ever, keep in mind that if something looks too good to be true it probably is.  These predatory publishers and journals are evolving so it can be challenging to be really confident about where to publish.  However, there are some helpful resources that exist to give you some guidance. These include Think, Check, Submit which covers book publishers as well as journals and  Cabell’s International – Predatory reports (cardiff.ac.uk). The university has a subscription to Cabell’s and I would always recommend using it to check if you are unsure on the status of a journal.  Using such tools for verification can provide reassurance and also stop us from jumping to the wrong conclusion which could potentially mean missing a genuine opportunity. For instance, there may be an assumption, or rumours, about all journals from a particular publisher being predatory and therefore all publishing with them should be banned. However, on closer inspection, by using Cabell’s, you may find that’s not always the case.

If you are interested in knowing more about this topic, the library recently published a Blas article on this topic – Be aware of predatory publishing practices – Intranet – Cardiff University. The library has also produced a tutorial which has a section on selecting journals for publication.

If you have any further questions, please contact your subject librarian.