Predatory Journals—also called fraudulent, deceptive, or pseudo-journals—are publications that claim to be legitimate scholarly journals, but misrepresent their publishing practices.
--Predatory Publishers are deceptive in their practices by conducting unsavory actions that go against scholarly publishing ethics. Such actions include charging fees to authors to publish their articles without standard editorial and publishing services and providing false or misleading information. The main goal of these publishers is to make a profit.
--They are harmful to the academic community by
(1) often publishing papers that have not gone through any peer-review process. The lack of peer review can invalidate research and allow falsified work to be published.
(2) not preserving published work, so materials published in predatory journals could disappear from the journals website at any time.
(3) not indexing work in reputable resources, so materials are hard to find.
(4) damaging authors' reputations and the reputation of higher education institutions.
Much thanks to both Emily Johnson at UTSA whose guide on Predatory Publishing laid the foundation for this guide and Andrew Weiss at Cal State Northridge whose guide on Predatory (vs. Professional) Publishing has influenced this guide.
