How to Avoid Predatory Publishers and Conferences

For additional help and guidance:

• Talk to your supervisor and colleagues
• Consult the Subject Librarian for your discipline
• Contact an Open Scholarship Services specialist at open.scholarship.services@queensu.ca.

• Before you submit: Think. Check. Submit 
• How to Assess a Journal: AKA How Not to Publish in an Undesirable Journal (Canadian Association of Research Libraries)
• Beall's List of Predatory ​Journals and Publishers (archived list)
• Scimago Journal Rank
• Google Scholar Metrics (Journals indexed in Google Scholar)
  • Journal Quality List (compiled and edited by Prof. Anne-Wil Harzing.)

• Directory of Open Access Journals
• Journal Citation Report (Database access via the Library)
• Search academic databases in your discipline

Here is a sample of useful readings on the issue of predatory and / or deceptive publishers:

Al-Khatib, A. (2016). Protecting authors from predatory journals and publishers. Publishing Research Quarterly, 32(4), 281-285.

Berger, M., & Cirasella, J. (2015). Beyond Beall’s list: better understanding predatory publishers. College & research libraries news, 76(3), 132-135.

Clark, J., & Smith, R. (2015). Firm action needed on predatory journals. BMJ, 350(jan16_1), h210.

Kozak, M., Iefremova, O., & Hartley, J. (2016). Spamming in scholarly publishing: a case study. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 67(8), 2009-2015.

Loscalzo, J. (2016). The Future of Medical Journal Publishing. Circulation, 133(16), 1621-1624.

Shen, C., & Björk, B. C. (2015). ‘Predatory’ open access: a longitudinal study of article volumes and market characteristics. BMC medicine, 13(1), 230.