Predatory journals: a 12-point checklist to spot them

What is a predatory journal?

In 2019, 43 participants from 10 countries agreed on a consensus definition, published in Nature: “Predatory journals and publishers are entities that prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship and are characterized by false or misleading information, deviation from best editorial and publication practices, a lack of transparency, and/or the use of aggressive and indiscriminate solicitation practices.”

In practice, you pay an article processing charge (APC) and the journal publishes your paper with little or no real peer review, while advertising editors, indexing and metrics it does not have. Hiring committees and databases ignore the paper, and getting it back is hard.

The problem is not marginal. Shen and Björk estimated that predatory journals published about 420,000 articles in 2014, in roughly 8,000 active journals. In 2022 the InterAcademy Partnership (IAP), the global network of science academies, estimated that more than a million researchers have probably used predatory outlets, mostly without realising it.

Three terms are often mixed up: a predatory journal is a real title run deceptively; a hijacked journal is a fake website copying a legitimate journal (see below); a low-quality journal has weak editing but does not deceive (see the grey zone).

The checklist: 12 red flags

No single flag proves anything, but three or four together should stop you. Each item ends with a free way to verify it.

1. Unsolicited, flattering invitations. Mass emails praising “your esteemed work” or offering you an editorial role. When researchers applied for editor posts at 360 journals on behalf of a fictitious scientist, “Anna O. Szust” (oszust is Polish for “a fraud”), 48 appointed her: 40 from Beall's list, 8 from DOAJ, none from Journal Citation Reports. Verify: never submit through the email link; find the journal yourself.

2. Guaranteed acceptance or a very fast decision. “Accepted in 72 hours.” Think. Check. Submit. lists as a good sign that “the journal doesn't guarantee acceptance or a very short peer review time”. Verify: look at the received and accepted dates on recent articles.

3. A vague peer-review description. No word on how many reviewers, or whether they are external. In a 2013 sting by Science, a deliberately flawed paper was accepted by 157 of 304 fee-charging open access journals. Verify: the process should be described, as the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice (COPE, DOAJ, OASPA, WAME, 2022) require.

4. Fake metrics. “Impact factors” from services such as the “Global Impact Factor” or “Universal Impact Factor”, both described as bogus metrics in Electronic Physician (2013). The real Journal Impact Factor comes from Clarivate's Journal Citation Reports, CiteScore from Scopus, the SJR from SCImago. Verify: look the journal up in Clarivate's Master Journal List, Scopus or SCImago, never on the journal's own badge.

5. False indexing claims. Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed or DOAJ logos on the home page. DOAJ warns that some sites claim DOAJ indexing falsely: “ALWAYS check at doaj.org”. Verify: search the ISSN on doaj.org and in Scopus, or use our Scopus checker.

6. Hidden or late fees. The fee appears only after acceptance, or a “withdrawal fee” follows. Verify: amount, currency and waivers should be on the website before you submit.

7. An editorial board you cannot verify. Names without affiliations, or famous scientists who never agreed to serve. Verify: check two or three names on their university pages or ORCID; if in doubt, email one.

8. ISSN problems. No ISSN, or one registered to another title or publisher. An ISSN “does not guarantee the quality or validity of the contents”, says the ISSN International Centre. Verify: in the ISSN Portal, title, publisher and URL must match.

9. A look-alike title or website. A name one letter away from a known journal, or an address different from the one in DOAJ or Scopus. Verify: search the Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker and compare addresses.

10. An unlimited scope. One journal for “engineering, medicine and management”. Clarivate lists a journal that “appears to accept papers in any subject” among its warning signs. Verify: do the papers in a recent issue match the title?

11. Membership claims you cannot confirm. COPE logos carry a personal membership ID, and COPE keeps an online member directory; OASPA publishes its member list. Verify: search the publisher on publicationethics.org and oaspa.org.

12. An opaque publisher and fake identifiers. No postal address, a free email account, no archiving. Retraction Watch notes that fake DOIs sometimes begin with 16 or 20, while real ones begin with 10. Verify: paste a DOI into doi.org and check that it resolves to the same journal.

Hijacked journals: when the website is the fake

A hijacked journal copies the title, ISSN and metadata of a legitimate journal, often by registering its expired domain, and collects fees from authors who think they are submitting to the real one. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker, built by researcher Anna Abalkina, started in May 2022 with a little over 100 entries and passed 400 in December 2025.

Being “in Scopus” is not enough: Abalkina identified 67 hijacked journals that had penetrated Scopus since 2013. To check, search the journal in the Checker, compare its address with DOAJ, Scopus and the ISSN Portal, and run a WHOIS lookup: a domain registered last year for a decades-old journal is a red flag.

Tools to check a journal, free and paid

Beall's list: history and limits

Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado Denver, began listing “potential, possible, or probable” predatory publishers in 2008. On 15 January 2017 his whole blog was taken offline. The university called it a personal decision; Beall later wrote that pressure from his employer caused it, which the university disputed.

What circulates as “Beall's list 2026” is an archive. Snapshots survive on the Wayback Machine, and beallslist.net, an anonymous site, keeps the original list frozen (“last updated December 31, 2016”) while adding notes and publishers that were not on Beall's original list. Critics also faulted the list for opaque criteria and for treating non-Western publishers harshly.

In 2018 the German Rectors' Conference (HRK) put it well: such lists help, but “it can never be guaranteed that such lists are up to date and complete”. Treat a listed publisher as a reason to look closer, and an unlisted one as not cleared.

The grey zone: questionable is not predatory

The IAP describes a spectrum from outright fraud through low-quality and questionable practices to best practice, and notes that established publishers can slip too. Before labelling a journal:

• Fees are not the problem; hiding them is. Many reputable gold open access journals charge APCs (see diamond, gold and green open access).
• New is not fake. A young journal has no impact factor yet.
• Low quality is not fraud. Slow or regional journals are not predatory unless they deceive.
• Location is not evidence. A 2022 ISSN US Centre project set out to examine whether journals from the Global South “might suffer the stigma of ‘predatory’ simply based on their location”.
• Indexing is not immunity. Journals are discontinued from Scopus, removed from DOAJ and cloned.

Where the line is clear: FTC v. OMICS

On 29 March 2019 a US federal court in Nevada granted summary judgment to the Federal Trade Commission against OMICS Group, two affiliates and their owner, with a judgment of $50,130,810. The FTC had alleged little or no peer review, editors listed without their consent, PubMed indexing claims the US National Institutes of Health had refused, and undisclosed fees. In September 2020 the Ninth Circuit affirmed, citing “ample evidence” of deception about peer review, publishing fees, impact factors and editorial board membership.

Already submitted or published? What to do

1. Submitted, not accepted: do not pay or sign anything; withdraw in writing.

2. Accepted, not online: refuse the publishing agreement and ask in writing to withdraw.

3. Already published: request retraction in writing even if nobody answers, never pay a “withdrawal fee”, and keep every email and invoice.

4. Get help from your library, open access office or research integrity officer.

5. Move on transparently. A substantially revised version can usually go to a reputable journal if you tell the editor about the earlier one. In applications, context is better received than concealment.

How Open Access Finder helps

By default the journal finder lists only journals that are in DOAJ and charge authors nothing: 14,571 diamond journals out of 23,657 DOAJ titles. With no APC, the business model of predatory publishing disappears. Browse by subject or find free Scopus journals.

The Scopus checker takes an ISSN or DOI, queries Scopus live and flags titles Elsevier lists as discontinued; see how to check Scopus indexing.

Our limits: DOAJ inclusion is a strong signal, not a guarantee, and we cannot detect clone websites. Before paying, make sure the site has the address shown in DOAJ. More in our open access guide.

Frequently asked questions

Is there an official list of predatory journals in 2026?

No global one. Cabells' Predatory Reports is paid, Beall's list is an unmaintained archive, and some national authorities, such as Algeria's DGRSDT, publish their own lists.

Is Beall's list still updated?

No. It was removed on 15 January 2017; copies online are archives with anonymous additions.

Is a journal predatory if it charges an APC?

No. The warning sign is a hidden fee, or a fee for peer review that never happens.

Can a Scopus-indexed journal be predatory?

Scopus discontinues titles for publication concerns, and hijackers clone Scopus journals. Check that coverage is current and the website matches.

How do I check whether a journal is hijacked?

Search the Hijacked Journal Checker, compare the address with DOAJ, Scopus and the ISSN Portal, and check the domain's age.

Are journals in DOAJ safe?

DOAJ reviews journals and publishes removals, so listing is a strong signal. Confirm the journal is still listed and the URL matches.

Is there a free predatory journal checker?

No single tool decides. Combine Think. Check. Submit., DOAJ, the ISSN Portal, the Hijacked Journal Checker and our Scopus checker.

Sources

• Grudniewicz, A. et al. (2019). Predatory journals: no definition, no defence. Nature 576, 210–212. doi:10.1038/d41586-019-03759-y
• Shen, C. & Björk, B.-C. (2015). BMC Medicine 13, 230. doi:10.1186/s12916-015-0469-2
• InterAcademy Partnership, Combatting predatory academic journals and conferences (March 2022).
• Sorokowski, P. et al. (2017). Predatory journals recruit fake editor. Nature 543, 481–483. doi:10.1038/543481a
• Bohannon, J. (2013). Who's afraid of peer review? Science 342, 60–65. doi:10.1126/science.342.6154.60
• Jalalian, M. & Mahboobi, H. (2013). Electronic Physician 5(3), 685–686. PMC4477750
• FTC, press release on OMICS (April 2019); Ninth Circuit, FTC v. OMICS Group (September 2020).
• Think. Check. Submit., Checklist for journals; UKSG Insights on its 2015 launch.
• COPE, DOAJ, OASPA, WAME, Principles of Transparency and Best Practice, version 4 (2022).
• DOAJ blog, Some journals say they are in DOAJ when they are not; lists of journals removed.
• ISSN International Centre, What is an ISSN?; ISSN US Centre project.
• Clarivate, Hijacked journals: what they are and how to avoid them.
• COPE, Questionable journal duplicating the name of a COPE member; OASPA, Current members.
• Retraction Watch, Hijacked Journal Checker and 400 entries (December 2025).
• Abalkina, A. (2024). JASIST 75(4), 395–422. doi:10.1002/asi.24855
• Cabells, Predatory Reports hits 20,000 journals (February 2026).
• Wikipedia, Beall's List; Beall, J. (2017). Biochemia Medica 27(2). doi:10.11613/BM.2017.029; beallslist.net.
• HRK, Prevent publishing in “predatory journals” (October 2018).
• Elsevier, Scopus content policy and selection.
• TIB, Predatory journals: courses of action.