This infographic is a checklist of the criteria that would indicate to authors whether a particular journal is predatory or legitimate. Researchers ought to consider these criteria before submitting their manuscript to a journal.
Predatory publishers refer to those publishers that charge authors publication fees or guarantee them publication, often skipping the integral process of peer review. It is easy for researchers to fall prey to these unauthentic publishing entities because their claims might help researchers with just what they need – an easy and guaranteed publication route. However, if these questionable entities are in the business of publishing sub-quality or factitious research, they could potentially harm not only researchers but scientific publishing as a whole. In such a scenario, authors must build their own defense by learning to identify the good journals from the bogus ones. Through this checklist, we recommend some of the main criteria that researchers ought to consider while selecting a journal for manuscript submission. In particular, it is a guide of what researchers should look for when they browse through a journal’s website and the kind of facts that they should verify.
Feel free to download a PDF version of this infographic and print it out as handy reference.
References:
- Beware of bogus publishers!
- Thirteen ways to spot a ‘predatory journal’ (and why we shouldn’t call them that)
You might also find these articles useful:
- Simple steps authors can follow to protect their research from predatory publishers
- Think Check Submit - The checklist that helps you choose a reliable journal
- Manuscript status showing unsubmitted even after having paid the article processing charge
- A predatory journal lures an author with false promises: A case study
