Open Access: Predatory Journals and Conferences

Statement on Article Publishing Resulting from NIH Funding

The NIH now provides guidelines to help authors publish in reputable journals. The sources they suggest are also listed in the Finding Reliable OA Journals & Books box to the right. Other NIH posts have appeared about how librarians can help and that the changing publishing landscape requires more attention from authors. 

This Libguide Page has been borrowed from the John's Hopkins Predatory Journals and Conferences page. Permission to use this content was granted by the author, Robin Sinn.

Open Access journals with article processing charges (APCs) are an attempt to change the way scholarly journals work, allowing authors or their institutions to pay once the article had been peer reviewed and accepted. The move away from subscriptions would allow anyone in the world to freely read the scholarship presented.

This business model, linked with the ability to create professional-looking web pages cheaply, gave scammers an opportunity. They create a fake journal website, solicit articles from researchers via email, accept those articles immediately without any peer review, collect the APC, and post the article. Fake conferences also follow this model.

In 2018 the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists started publishing articles resulting from their investigation of predatory journals. Several of those articles are linked below.

• New international investigation tackles ‘fake science’ and its poisonous effects
• Inside India’s fake research paper shops: pay, publish, profit
• Explained: How the pay-and-publish business works
• OMICS chief Srinubabu Gedela: ‘Our revenue from India is almost zero’
• More than 5,000 German scientists have published papers in pseudo-scientific journals