Checklist for recognising fake journals (predatory journals)

To avoid supporting the fraudulent business models of fake journals, and to protect your scientific reputation, it is vital to recognise deceptive offers in good time and thus avoid them. There are lots of tools available on the internet for this purpose, including:

• The platform Think. Check. Submit provides a short checklist:
  http://thinkchecksubmit.org/
• The platform Cabell's Scholarly Analytics has developed a very detailed list of criteria:
  Cabell's Predatory Reports Criteria
• The COPE initiative has been involved with transparency and best practice for academic journals for several years and provides a list of criteria on its homepage

The following list summarises the most important criteria from the sources above:

Cover letter by email/invitation to publish:

• general phrase instead of personal form of address (e.g. "Dear esteemed author")
• the journal does not match your field of expertise
• suspicious contact details (postal address does not exist; email addresses from free providers)

The journal:

• title is very generic and often includes words such as International, Global, World, American, European, Advanced Journal of...
• title is very similar to a well-known journal
• ISSN does not exist (existing ISSNs can be found at portal.issn.org)
• fake or misleading Impact Factor (a list of dubious metrics)
• very wide range of topics from A to Z
• articles have poor layout
• editorial board members are from fields that don't match the journal

Website:

• poor grammar and layout
• written to appeal to authors, not readers
• suspicious contact information (postal address does not exist; email addresses from free providers)
• texts and downloadable material often copied from reputable journals

Manuscript submission:

• submission by email instead of an online system
• very short time between submission and publication
• no specific information on peer review and APCs

Please note that some of the criteria in this list may also apply to legitimate journals and that a single feature is not necessarily a clear indication of a fake journal. For example, a suspicious feature may simply indicate that the journal's quality standards are not particularly high, or that the editors have little experience.

It is important to distinguish these quite respectable journals from fake ones. Therefore, you should consider as many features as possible in your evaluation. If the home page gives correct and transparent information about the services offered, the costs incurred (APCs), the Impact Factor (if there is one) and the editorial board, it is usually not a fake journal but a reputable one, possibly with lower quality standards.