The term predatory publishing was coined by Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado, to describe deceitful publishing practices that capitalize on the existing market for open access publishing. Predatory publishers are motivated primarily by large profits, rather than a commitment to the best ethical practices of research publication, and prey on the professional motivation of researchers to publish.
While even legitimate journals may charge fees in order to make content available as open access, predatory publishers are deceitful or unethical in their business by:
- publishing articles as quickly as possible and without a thorough review
- soliciting articles through misleading, mass emails
- being misleading about their peer-review process
- making false claims about their journals' impact or about the prestige of their editorial board
Predatory publishing not only has a high financial cost to authors and institutions, it also has the potential to flood the research environment with poorly conducted research or falsified data.
This page will help you identify some characteristics of predatory publishers and offer some resources and tips for investigating publishers to determine whether they are reputable or potentially predatory. By being vigilant when you enter the publication process and when you are conducting a literature search, you will protect not only yourself, but you will help reduce the presence of invalid research that can proliferate on the internet.