A predatory journal or publisher exploits the pay-to-publish open-access model — charging authors an article processing charge (APC) while skipping or faking the editorial and peer-review work that charge is supposed to fund. The cost isn’t just the fee: an article published this way sits outside the genuinely indexed, discoverable scholarly record, doesn’t satisfy most funder or tenure-and-promotion requirements, and can be difficult or impossible to retract or correct later because there’s no real editorial process to appeal to. This guide covers the specific, checkable red flags, the legitimate directories and checklists built to catch them, and why no single “list” of predatory titles is a reliable shortcut anymore.
What “predatory” actually means — and what it doesn’t
There is no single legal or regulatory definition of predatory publishing. The most widely cited attempt to fix that is a 2019 consensus definition from a 43-expert cross-disciplinary group led by Agnes Grudniewicz, published in Nature: predatory journals “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” (Grudniewicz et al., “Predatory journals: no definition, no defence,” Nature 576, 210–212, 2019).
Two things that definition deliberately does not say: it doesn’t equate predatory with open access itself, and it doesn’t equate predatory with being new, small, or having a low or absent Journal Impact Factor. Most fully open-access journals are legitimate, and most new or specialist journals are not predatory — they simply haven’t built a track record yet. Conflating “unfamiliar” with “predatory” is itself a common error, and it’s worth naming directly: large multidisciplinary open-access publishers are also, separately, the subject of genuine, ongoing public debate in the scholarly-communication community about editorial rigor, special-issue volume, and reviewer workload — that is a real and unresolved discussion, but it is a different question from whether a specific title meets the Grudniewicz criteria, and it’s not one this page settles for any named publisher (see the note below on why).
The red flags to check on any specific journal or publisher
None of these alone is proof; several together, especially combined with an unfamiliar or unverifiable publisher, is a strong signal.
- Peer review that’s fake, absent, or impossibly fast. A journal that promises acceptance in days, doesn’t describe its review process anywhere on the site, or accepts submissions clearly outside its stated scope with no revisions requested is not doing genuine peer review, regardless of what the website claims.
- A fabricated or unverifiable editorial board. Names with no institutional affiliation, dead links to editor profiles, or (documented repeatedly in the scholarly-integrity literature) real academics listed as editors without their knowledge or consent. A quick check: search for one or two listed editors independently — do they list this editorship anywhere on their own institutional page or CV?
- Aggressive, indiscriminate solicitation. Unsolicited emails praising a specific paper in flattering, generic terms, inviting submission to a journal wildly outside the recipient’s field, or promising an unusually fast turnaround and a “special discount” on the APC — this is the “aggressive and indiscriminate solicitation” clause in the Grudniewicz definition, and it is one of the most reliable single indicators precisely because legitimate journals rarely cold-solicit individual authors this way.
- Opaque or hidden APCs. Fee information that’s missing, vague, or only disclosed after a paper has already been accepted (at which point the author faces strong pressure to pay rather than withdraw). A legitimate journal states its APC, and any waiver policy, clearly before submission.
- Other common markers: fabricated or self-reported “impact factors” that aren’t Clarivate’s Journal Impact Factor or a comparable indexed metric; a journal name deliberately similar to an established, unrelated title; false claims of indexing in Scopus, Web of Science, or PubMed that don’t check out against those databases directly; and a website with broken English, stock photography standing in for real editorial content, or no verifiable physical address.
Legitimate checklists and directories to verify against
Rather than relying on judgment alone, cross-check a specific journal against tools built and maintained for this purpose:
- Think. Check. Submit. — a free, cross-industry checklist run by a coalition that includes ALPSP, COPE, COPE, DOAJ, ISSN, LIBER, OASPA, STM, and UKSG. It walks through publisher identifiability, peer-review transparency, indexing, fee disclosure, and author-rights documentation, and gives a plain framework rather than a yes/no verdict.
- DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) — indexes fully open-access journals against published, publicly available criteria co-developed with COPE, OASPA, and WAME (the “Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing“), including a minimum one-year publishing history (or 10+ published OA articles), disclosed peer review with at least two independent reviewers, and a cap on how much of a journal’s own output can come from its own editors or board members. Being listed in DOAJ is a meaningful positive signal; being absent from it is not automatically proof of predation, since not every legitimate journal has applied.
- COPE membership — COPE journal/publisher membership has its own eligibility bar (a minimum publishing history and a minimum number of published original research articles among the criteria), and COPE’s Core Practices set out the editorial and ethical standards members commit to. COPE’s own member search lets you check a specific title directly.
- Cabells’ Predatory Reports — a subscription database (commonly available through an institutional library) that evaluates journals against dozens of specific criteria and functions as the closest thing to a current successor to Beall’s List (see below), though — unlike a free public list — entries reflect a paid, criteria-based evaluation rather than one person’s judgment.
- The ISSN Portal — cross-checking a journal’s claimed ISSN against the official ISSN Portal catches a surprising number of cases where a predatory title has invented an ISSN or is using one registered to a different publication.
Why there’s no single current “list” to check against
Researchers still ask for “the” list of predatory journals, usually meaning Beall’s List — the list maintained by University of Colorado Denver librarian Jeffrey Beall on his blog, Scholarly Open Access. Beall removed the entire list and blog on January 15, 2017, after what he later described as sustained pressure, including threatened legal action from publishers named on it. It has not been actively maintained since. Community-run mirrors of the frozen 2017 snapshot exist and are sometimes cited, but they are unofficial, not updated by Beall, and reflect a nearly decade-old judgment — a publisher added or removed from any authoritative index since 2017 won’t be reflected there at all.
The practical result: there is no free, actively maintained, single-source list that functions as a reliable current answer for “is this journal predatory.” Cabells’ paid Predatory Reports database is the closest ongoing successor, DOAJ and COPE membership function as continuously-updated positive screens, and Think.Check.Submit gives a free do-it-yourself framework — using two or three of these together, rather than searching for a static list, is the current best practice.
A note on why this page doesn’t name specific journals or publishers
A common version of this search is a question about one specific, named publisher or journal — asking, in effect, “is [Publisher X] predatory?” This guide deliberately doesn’t answer that for any named title, for two connected reasons. First, DOAJ listing, COPE membership, and Cabells’ evaluations change over time (a journal can be added, delisted, or reassessed), so any specific verdict stated here would go stale and could become actively wrong without anyone updating this page. Second, a “predatory” label attached to a specific, real publisher is a serious, potentially reputation-affecting claim that deserves a live, current, sourced answer from the tools built to make that determination — not a static judgment call embedded in an unrelated guide. If you’re evaluating one specific journal, run it through Think.Check.Submit, check its current DOAJ and COPE status directly, and check a subscription tool like Cabells’ Predatory Reports if your institution has access — that gives you a current, defensible answer for that specific title, which this page cannot.
A practical workflow before you submit or pay an APC
- Search for the journal by name and ISSN — does the ISSN Portal record match the publisher, title, and subject area claimed on the journal’s own site?
- Look up the journal directly in DOAJ and in COPE’s member search — don’t rely on a badge or logo on the journal’s own website, since these are sometimes displayed without authorization.
- Read the peer-review policy on the journal’s site. If it isn’t described in specific, checkable terms (number of reviewers, blind/open review, typical timeline), treat that as a red flag on its own.
- Check the APC amount and waiver policy before submitting, not after acceptance.
- If you received an unsolicited invitation to submit, treat that as a reason for more scrutiny, not less — legitimate journals rarely recruit individual authors this way.
- If your institution or funder maintains its own guidance or an approved-journal list, check it — many research offices and libraries now provide one, informed by the same tools listed above.
Common questions
Is a journal predatory just because it charges an APC?
No. Article processing charges fund large parts of the legitimate gold open-access publishing model, including well-established journals from major publishers and society journals. The distinguishing issue isn’t whether a fee exists, but whether it’s disclosed transparently before submission and whether real peer review and editorial work happen in exchange for it. See CASRAI’s guide to article processing charges for typical cost ranges, who actually pays, and how legitimate waiver programs work.
Can a predatory journal have a real ISSN or claim to be indexed somewhere?
Yes. An ISSN is a registration identifier, not a quality marker, and predatory titles sometimes obtain a legitimate one or falsely claim indexing status. Always verify a specific indexing claim (Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, DOAJ) against that database directly rather than taking the journal’s own website’s word for it.
If a journal is in DOAJ or a COPE member, is it automatically legitimate?
It’s a strong positive signal, not an absolute guarantee. Both DOAJ and COPE run ongoing screening and have removed members/listings that stopped meeting criteria, but no directory catches every case immediately, and criteria can be met unevenly across a large publisher’s journal portfolio. Use directory status as one input alongside the red-flag checklist above, not as the only check.
What should I do if my funder or institution specifically asks whether a journal is predatory?
Provide what you can verify directly — current DOAJ/COPE status, ISSN Portal confirmation, and (if available) a Cabells Predatory Reports check — rather than a personal judgment. Many funders and institutions increasingly publish their own guidance or an approved/disallowed list for exactly this reason; check whether yours does before doing the assessment from scratch.
Can a real, reputable publisher still have individual journals that are lower quality?
Yes — publication quality is frequently assessed at the level of an individual journal or even a special issue, not only at the level of the parent publisher, and this is an area of active, legitimate debate in scholarly publishing even for large, indexed, non-predatory publishers. That’s a separate question from the specific Grudniewicz-style predatory criteria covered in this guide, and it’s exactly the kind of judgment that benefits from checking a specific title against the tools above rather than relying on the publisher’s overall reputation either way.
