How to identify predatory publishers

Is the magazine or publisher serious?

The increasing publication with open access has led to the emergence of many unserious publishers. A term for journals is also "predatory journals".  Common signs for these publishers are:

• Offers quick peer review process (which never actually takes place)
• Websites that look serious. Most often, editorial boards and impact factor are included (both of which are based on false information).
• Aggressive marketing via email.

To avoid accidentally publishing on a rogue publisher, follow the checklists in the guide Think.Check.Submit.

If a journal or publisher appears in the databases below, it is a measure of seriousness:

• Web of Science (journals)
• Scopus (journals)
• The Norwegian list (both publishers and journals at least level 1)
• DOAJ (journals)
• DOAB (book publisher)

Vanity Press/Publishing

The term Vanity Press/Publishing refers to "publishing for vanity's sake". They are also called subsidy publishers and charge a fee from the author for publishing a book. While there are some cases where publishing with vanity press is justified, these publishers generally have no interest in promoting and selling the book. Vanity press does not make its money from selling the book, but from selling book production services to the author.

Vanity press is often aimed at early-career researchers who are looking for publishing opportunities or can offer to publish their dissertation.

Vanity press usually means:

• do not undergo peer review or proofreading with the same rigour as scientific publications
• may require the author to pay a publication fee

However, vanity press should not be confused with hybrid publishing, where the publisher and author collaborate and share costs and risks, or with assisted self-publishing, where the authors, sometimes called author contractors, pay various contractors and publishing services to help them self-publish their own book and retain all rights.

More information

• About questionable journals and conferences (University of Borås)
• Predatory publishers: to recognize them is to avoid them (J of EAHIL)
• Predatory publishing: A-Z Elements (Australian Government)
• 5 Signs to Spot Vanity Publishers (Kotobee Blog)
• I sold my undergraduate thesis to a print content farm ( Josef Strömberg)

Questioned open access

There are also models and concepts of open access that should be looked out for.

Orangewashing

This term refers to when publishers try to use the term open access to take part in the open access movement, even though they do not allow open access publishing at all and do not meet the requirements of the Berlin Declaration.

Bronze

The bridge's open access means that a work is first published on a locked behind subscription and then released freely available after a period of time - free to read but not reuse, adapt or share. An explicit embargo period is common. Bronze is not seen as full-fledged open access publishing. Licenses for how the publications may be used are often lacking, and several funders do not accept the model at all.

Grey

Grey open access refers to authors who upload their work on academic social networks (e.g. ResearchGate, Academia.edu) or their own websites. This can be problematic because the author may be in breach of the publishers' license agreements. To avoid this when it comes to journals, it is important to investigate what it looks like with the publishers' licenses in Open Policy Finder.

Black

Black open access often means ignoring copyright and not paying the financial costs of an item. The users of the black open get free access to digital versions of articles without the authors' knowledge and consent. Black open access arose as a result of the growing demand for fast, easy, and free access to scientific material. Material shared in this way may infringe the publishers' licenses and copyrights.

This model can take different forms that you as a writer need to pay attention to:

• The author of the article is asked to provide a copy via the link to an institutional archive
• Logins are shared on social media with an unauthorized person to access content that requires a subscription.
• pirated content websites, such as Sci-Hub and LibGen.