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Guide to: Predatory Publishing

Information and resources to better understand this issue in scholarly communication.

What is predatory publishing?

While there are many high-quality, peer-reviewed open access publications, there are also open access publishers that engage in unethical practices. 

"Predatory publishers" is a term  used to describe opportunistic open access publishers that charge publication fees to authors without providing the editorial and publishing services associated with legitimate journals. [1] 

Predatory publishers share several characteristics:[2]

  • They engage in questionable business practices, such as charging excessive author fees or failing to disclose publication fees to potential authors.
  • They fail to follow accepted standards of scholarly publishing, particularly in regards to peer review.
  • They exist to make money by taking advantage of the "author-pays model" of open access journal publishing,* and have no interest in promoting scholarship or advancing knowledge.

Grateful acknowledgement is given to the following for content and organizational strategies borrowed from their guides on predatory publishing:

Scholarly Publishing: Predatory Publishing by Ruth Bueter at Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library, George Washington University 

Evaluating Open Access Journals by Lisa Palmer at Lamar Soutter Library, UMass Medical School

Scholarly Communication: Predatory Publishers by Rosemary Arneson at University of Mary Washington Libraries