Predatory journals and conferences imitate legitimate academic venues but exist mainly to collect fees, offering little or no genuine peer review. Publishing or presenting with them can cost researchers money and damage their professional reputation. This guide explains the warning signs and how to verify a journal or conference using free, widely trusted tools. It is built around the Think. Check. Submit. and Think. Check. Attend. checklists, with journals and conferences covered in separate sections.
What Is a Predatory Journal?
Predatory journal: a journal that collects publication fees but provides little or no real peer review, editing, or quality control, while presenting itself as legitimate.
Consensus definition (Grudniewicz et al., 2019, Nature): “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 aggressive and indiscriminate solicitation practices.”
Found in every academic discipline.
Not the same as a preprint: preprint servers (arXiv, bioRxiv, SSRN) openly say that a paper has not been peer-reviewed yet, which is an honest, disclosed status, not a deception. Predatory journals are different since they falsely claim, or give the impression that proper peer review has been carried out.
Why Are Predatory Journals Dangerous?
What are the risks to me as a researcher?
Loss of money and time: publication fees are paid without receiving the editorial, peer review or publishing services you expected.
Career impact: publishing in predatory journals can affect how your research record is viewed in recruitment, tenure, promotion, or grant decisions.
Loss of work: some predatory publishers refuse withdrawal requests, and the paper counts as "already published", leaving you unable to submit the same work to a reputable journal. Furthermore, predatory publishers may disappear, leaving published work inaccessible or poorly preserved.
Identity misuse: researchers' names are sometimes added to editorial boards without their consent.
Early-career researchers are targeted most, due to publish-or-perish pressure and less familiarity with publishing practices in reputable journals.
What are the risks to scholarship?
Research that has not undergone appropriate peer review may start being cited and shared in the media.
Sharing of medical or scientific information before flaws are noticed.
Predatory publishing can damage confidence in scholarly publishing, including legitimate Open Access Journals.
What is the actual intent of predatory publishers?
To generate revenue by presenting themselves as legitimate scholarly publishers without providing the expected standards of editorial oversight and peer review.
To exploit the publish-or-perish pressure, the growth of author-paid Open Access publishing model, and the lack of experience of non-specialists to judge the quality of research at first glance.
Journal Red Flags
Peer review & editors
Promises unusually fast peer review or publication (e.g. “3–7 days”) without a credible explanation of the review process.
No named editor-in-chief or editorial board, or listed board members cannot be verified.
The journal’s scope is unrealistically broad, covering many unrelated subject areas in a single journal.
There is little or no evidence that submitted papers are ever rejected.
Emails & communication
Sends unsolicited, overly flattering emails (e.g. “esteemed professor”), sometimes praising previous work that is unrelated to the journal’s field.
Uses poor grammar, spelling mistakes, or strange formatting, including inconsistent font sizes, or styles.
Uses a generic greeting rather than your correct name or title (e.g. “Dear Author”).
Provides contact only through a web form or free email service (e.g. Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail) rather than an official institutional or journal domain.
Asks you to email your manuscript directly as an attachment rather than through a proper online submission system.
Fees
Article-processing charges undisclosed, unclear, or revealed only after acceptance of manuscript.
No waiver policy, no stated currency, no links to actual terms of service.
Fees seem unusually low or high without a clear explanation. Sometimes additional charges appear later in the publication process.
Website & policies
Has no clear “About Us” page or easily accessible contact information.
Does not provide an ISSN, or lists an ISSN that cannot be verified.
Provides no clear policies on retractions, copyright, or licensing.
Author guidelines are missing, vague, or inconsistent with the journal’s published content or practices.
Indexing, metrics & identity
Claims to be indexed in Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, or DOAJ, but the claim cannot be verified.
Advertises an “impact factor” or other metric from an unrecognised or questionable source (e.g. Global Impact Factor, CiteFactor, etc).
Uses a title that closely resembles that of an established journal, sometimes with only one or two words changed.
Has a website with multiple credibility concerns, such as generic templates, stock photos, broken links or contact details that cannot be verified.
Claims partnerships or affiliations with universities, professional bodies, or scholarly societies that cannot be verified.
How to check a journal before you submit
Before submitting your work, carry out a few basic checks, keeping in mind that no single indicator is conclusive.
Check recognised indexes and directories. Search the DOAJand, for health sciences, the NLM Catalog. Check whether the journal or its articles appear in your library's own subscription databases.
Check DOI registration where relevant. Search Crossref to see whether the journal's published articles and DOIs can be verified. Note that a DOI does not, in itself, indicate quality or endorsement of a journal.
3. Verify the journal's identity. Confirm its ISSN through theISSN Portal and check that the title and publisher details match. If you suspect a cloned or hijacked journal, check theRetraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker.
Check relevant professional memberships. Where applicable, verify claims of membership of organisations such asCOPE,OASPA or theSTM Association.
Check the publisher and editorial board. Look for clear publisher details and named board members. Verify a few members through their institutional profiles or Google Scholar.
Review the journal's publishing practices. A credible journal should clearly explain its peer-review process, fees, copyright and licensing arrangements, and policies on plagiarism, corrections and retractions.
Look at previous issues and articles. Check whether past issues are readily available and whether published articles appear professionally edited and consistent with the journal's stated scope.
Be cautious about unsolicited approaches. Repeated or mass email invitations to submit papers, particularly outside your area of expertise, should prompt further checks. Did your colleagues receive similar invitations?
A hijacked journal isa fake website that clones a real journal's name, ISSN, and is designed to collect fees for papers that will never actually be published.
Always reach a journal through its official publisher website or a trusted database, rather than through an unfamiliar search result or a link in an unsolicited email.
What is a fraudulent special issue?
A fraudulent special issue is a themed issue that may appear to be associated with a legitimate journal but is promoted or managed without the journal’s usual editorial safeguards. These invitations are often circulated through unsolicited emails.
Verify the special issue and journal independently before accepting an invitation to submit or act as a guest editor.
If in doubt, contact the editorial office via the publisher's official website, rather than replying to the invitation email.
Beyond the Checklist: Other Deceptive Practices to Know About
Think. Check. Submit [PDF] is designed to assess the credibility of a single journal. This section highlights other deceptive publishing practices that may not be identified through a standard journal check and, in some cases, can occur within otherwise legitimate journals.
Paper mills and authorship for sale
Paper mills are organisations that produce fake, fabricated, or heavily templated research papers and then sell authorship positions on those papers to people who want to appear as published researchers. These papers may be submitted to legitimate academic journals, and in some cases, can get published because the journal’s review process has been manipulated, for example through compromised guest editors or dishonest reviewers.
Unlike predatory journals, the journal itself may be legitimate. The misconduct lies in specific submissions or issues rather than in the entire journal.
Paper mills have become a significant and coordinated concern in scholarly publishing. In 2023, COPE and STM launched the industry-wide United2Act initiative to address this problem, and many publishers now screen incoming manuscripts for known paper-mill patterns.
If you are ever offered co-authorship on a paper you did not contribute to or researched, or asked to pay for an authorship position, treat this as a serious warning sign and decline the offer.
Citation manipulation
Citation cartelsaregroups of authors, editors, or journals who systematically cite each other, or coerce authors into adding unnecessary citations, purely to inflate citation counts and journal metrics.
A request from a reviewer or editor to add citations to their own work, or to a suspiciously narrow set of other papers, without a clear scholarly justification, is a warning sign.
Citation manipulation is different from the fees and peer-review issues covered in the checklist above, but it reflects the same broader problem of prioritising metrics over genuine scholarly contribution.
AI-generated fake content
AI-generated manuscripts, fabricated data, or AI-written peer reviews may be submitted to real journals, sometimes produced at scale by the same paper-mill operations described above.
Warning signs can include oddly generic or repetitive phrasing, citations that do not support the claims being made, or peer reviews that read as vague and templated rather than specific to the manuscript.
What is a predatory conference?
A predatory conference isan event organised mainly to collect registration fees, with little or no vetting of the quality or credibility of the speakers.
Often bundles unrelated subjects into a single “international” event.
Sometimes runs multiple similarly named "conferences" at the same venue and on the same dates, mainly to maximise registrations and revenue.
How do predatory conferences usually operate?
Unsolicited, flattering invitations to deliver keynote speeches or chair a session, despite no earlier connection with the organisers.
Heavy promotion of the destination (resorts, tourist attractions) rather than the academic programme or scholarly value of the event.
Little transparency about who is reviewing abstracts.
Why Are Predatory Conferences Dangerous?
What are the risks to me as a researcher?
Loss of money and time: Registration fees, travel costs, and preparation time may be spent on an event that offers little or no real academic value.
Career impact: A keynote speech or presentation at a known predatory conference may be viewed negatively rather than as a professional achievement.
Wasted work: If conference proceedings are not properly published or indexed, your presented work may gain little visibility or scholarly impact.
Greater risk for early-career researchers: Early-career academics are often targeted through mass-emailed invitations offering roles such as “invited speaker”, “keynote speaker”, or "session chair".
What is the risk to scholarship?
Poor-quality dissemination: Presented “research” may never be properly peer-reviewed, recorded or made retrievable.
Confusion and reputational harm: Legitimate academic conferences may be overshadowed by, or mistaken for fraudulent conferences with similar names.
Misuse of resources: Universities, funders, and researchers may spend limited financial resources on travel and participation in events that offer little or no genuine academic benefit.
Predatory Conference Red Flags
Organisation & scope
The organiser is unknown in your field, or falsely claims support from a known university or society.
The conference title is unrealistically broad, covering several unrelated disciplines or subject areas at once.
The same “conference” runs in several cities on the same dates or overlapping dates.
The organiser runs various similarly-named conferences throughout the year, often across different locations.
There is very little detail on the programme, organising committee and speakers.
Solicitation & fees
Unsolicited and overly flattering invitations to deliver keynote speeches or chair a session with no prior connection to the field.
Heavy promotion of the destination, hotels or tourist attractions over the academic programme.
Guaranteed or unrealistically fast abstract acceptance, with little or no evidence of peer review.
Unclear or hidden registration fees, or no waiver for accepted speakers.
Proceedings & indexing
No clear information on where proceedings will be published.
Indexing promises (e.g. Scopus, Web of Science) that you cannot verify independently.
Past proceedings are missing, hard to find, or of clearly poor academic quality.
How to Verify a Conference (Step-by-Step)
Work through theThink.Check.Attend. checklist [PDF] - a 14-question framework covering organisers, fees, peer review, publication and indexing.
Check whether your library's databases include past proceedings volumes.
Verify claimed sponsors directly by checking the sponsors’ own websites rather than clicking the links or logos displayed on the conference website.
Ask colleagues in your field whether they have heard of the conference, organiser, or members of the organising committee.
Read past proceedings, if available. Do the papers look like real, peer-reviewed scholarship?
What Does a Legitimate Conference Look Like?
The organiser is a recognised academic/professional society, university, or publisher - verifiable on its own website.
The scope is clearly defined and relevant to your field, rather than implausibly broad.
There is a clearly described abstract or paper review process, with a diligent editorial process.
Registration fees are transparent with any discounts, waivers, or speaker arrangements clearly explained.
There is a clear, verifiable plan for publishing and indexing proceedings.
Accessible past editions with proceedings of visible scholarly quality.
Colleagues in your field have heard of it or attended before.
Beyond the Checklist: Other Deceptive Practices to Know About
Think. Check. Attend. [PDF] is designed to judge a single conference on its own merits. The practices below are related but distinct, and worth recognising on top of the checklist above.
Hijacked or clone conferences
A fake website or listing clones the name, branding, and sometimes even the programme of a real, established conference series to collect registration fees for an event that either does not exist or has no connection to the genuine organisers.
Always reach a conference through the official organising society's own website, not through a search result, a forwarded flyer, or links received by email, and cross-check the dates and venue against the genuine organiser's own announcements.
AI-generated fake proceedings content
Paper-mill activity, fabricated research, and AI-generated content can also appear in conference proceedings, particularly where editorial controls and peer review are weak or absent.
Reading a selection of papers from past proceedings remains one of the most practical ways to assess the scholarly quality of a conference before committing to participate.
