Plan outputs and publication: determine where to publish (data and research Outputs)

This harmful model exploits the payment of article processing charges (APCs) to the journal by the researcher for publishing their manuscript Open Access. Potentially fake journals pose as ordinary journals to the researcher, while providing none of the quality assurance that legitimate Open Access journals offer in return to the APC charges, such as peer review, discoverability and long term access. It might be confusing for researchers to distinguish quality and reputation from the business model of journals—higher APCs do not guarantee higher quality standards.

Researchers can consult with the eRKU before submitting a manuscript to a journal they had no personal experience with— we have the skills to evaluate the trustworthiness of journals. In fact, the first list of predatory publishers to keep track of non-authoritative journals was started in 2008 by a librarian at the University of Colorado Denver—Jeffrey Beall. Surrounded by much controversy, Beall eventually took down the list in January of 2017, but it has been reincarnated by an anonymous group with a project called “Stop predatory publishing” running on GitHub. Other initiatives to tackle predatory publishing librarians and information specialists are involved in are the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), which indexes high quality open access journals.

We do not use the Beall's list to determine whether a publisher is harmful or not. 

Follow the tips, as described below. to spot potentially fake (predatory publishers):

• Who is the editor? Is there an editor? Are these entities known in the field where you are publishing?
• Absence of an editorial body
• Full names, affiliations, contact detail of members of the Editorial Board should be clearly listed on the website
• Google members of the Board to verify accurate (real) academic affiliations
• Journal title should be unique. Beware of similarities to well-known titles
• Be careful of journals with ridiculously broad scopes
• Journal website should clearly demonstrate that it is bound to ethical and professional standards
• They may provide false journal impact factors – if it is too high, it is too big to be true!
• Publishers who solicit manuscripts by spamming authors, by sending overly effusive and ego-stroking spam emails
• Publishers with gmail / Hotmail / yahoo accounts
• Poor grammar and syntax, many exclamation marks, brightly coloured fonts
• Promises a “quick peer-review process”
• Author fee / APC’s should be clearly stated and identifiable before submission for review purposes
• Copyright and licensing information should be clearly described. If OA, it should be protected by Creative Commons license