How to Spot a Predatory Journal

The email is flattering and it arrives at exactly the right moment. Dear Distinguished Doctor, having read your esteemed work, we invite you to submit to our journal. Rapid peer review, publication within two weeks.

You have a study that has been rejected twice, a fellowship application due, and a supervisor asking about progress. It is very easy to say yes.

What follows is a charge you did not expect, no peer review worth the name, and a paper sitting permanently in a journal nobody indexes and every panel recognises. Predatory journals almost never allow withdrawal, and a paper cannot be republished elsewhere once it exists. The damage is not that you wasted money — it is that the work is gone.

This post covers the checks. They take five minutes. It sits within our research integrity series.

What a predatory journal actually is

A publisher that takes article processing charges while providing none of what a journal is supposed to provide: no genuine peer review, no editorial oversight, no archiving, no real indexing.

They are not simply low-quality journals. A poor journal does its job badly; a predatory one is not doing the job at all. The business model is the fee, and the fee is charged for the appearance of publication.

Related traps worth naming:

Hijacked journals — scammers copy or acquire the title and ISSN of a real journal and run a fraudulent website while the legitimate journal continues elsewhere. You submit to what you believe is an established title and pay someone else entirely.

Predatory conferences — the same model with a registration fee, generic multi-specialty scope, and an invitation to speak that arrives without anyone having read your work.

The red flags

None is conclusive alone. Two or three together is your answer.

The unsolicited flattering email. Legitimate journals do not cold-email surgeons soliciting submissions with compliments. This one signal catches most of them.

Guaranteed rapid publication. "Peer review within 48 hours", "publication in two weeks". Real orthopaedic peer review takes weeks to months because it involves finding two busy surgeons and waiting for them.

Fees revealed late. Charges concealed until after acceptance, or after submission. Legitimate journals publish their APCs openly — see Open Access and APCs.

Absurdly broad scope. A single journal covering orthopaedics, dentistry, cardiology and agriculture is not a journal.

An unverifiable editorial board. Names with no institutional affiliation, no online presence, or from unrelated fields. Some list people who never agreed and do not know they are listed — check two or three names directly.

Non-institutional contact. A Gmail or Yahoo address for submissions, no postal address or a fake one, no working phone.

Fake metrics. Covered below, and one of the most reliable tells.

Poor language on the site. Spelling and grammatical errors on the journal's own pages.

False claims of indexing or membership. "Indexed in Scopus", "COPE member" — assertions that are simply untrue and that you can check in two minutes.

Fake impact factors

Worth its own section, because it is where the deception is most systematic.

The only legitimate Impact Factor is published by Clarivate in Journal Citation Reports. Other genuine metrics exist — CiteScore from Scopus, SJR from SCImago — and they are transparent about their source.

Anything else claiming to be an impact factor is almost certainly a fabricated metric sold by a fraudulent organisation. Names that recur include Global Impact Factor, Universal Impact Factor, SJIF and CITEFACTOR. A journal advertising one of these is telling you what it is.

If you see an "impact factor" quoted with no source, or with a source you do not recognise, treat it as a red flag rather than a selling point.

The positive checks

Faster and more reliable than hunting for red flags: verify legitimacy directly.

The general principle: verify every claim at its source, never on the journal's own website. Predatory publishers state whatever is useful, and the claims are trivial to check.

Where orthopaedic trainees get caught

The pressure points are predictable.

A deadline. A fellowship or training application with a publication requirement, and weeks to go. Guaranteed rapid publication is designed for exactly this moment.

Repeated rejection. After two rejections, a journal that accepts enthusiastically is a relief.

A case report. Genuinely harder to place in mainstream journals, so authors go further down the list than they otherwise would.

Unfamiliarity with the field's journals. Trainees new to research often do not know which titles are real, and a plausible-sounding name is easy to construct.

An invitation to a special issue. Flattering, urgent, and a common vector.

If you have already published in one

More common than anyone admits, and not the end of your career.

• You usually cannot withdraw it. Predatory publishers rarely cooperate, and some demand a further fee to remove a paper.
• Do not republish it elsewhere. That is duplicate publication and creates a genuine integrity problem on top of a bad decision.
• Be honest about it if asked. "I published there before I understood how to evaluate journals" is a fine answer and a common one.
• Leave it off your CV if it adds nothing — that is not concealment, it is curation.
• Tell your supervisor, particularly if co-authors are affected.
• Learn the checks and apply them from now on.

If the work is genuinely good, consider whether a substantially extended and reanalysed version could be published legitimately — but take advice first, because the line between extension and duplication is one you must not cross accidentally.

Choosing where to submit, positively

Rather than only avoiding the bad:

1. Where do the papers you cite appear? Those are your field's journals.
2. Ask your supervisor for their target list, in order.
3. Aim realistically, then work down a pre-agreed list rather than improvising after each rejection.
4. Check indexing yourself before submitting, not after.
5. Check the APC before submitting and confirm who is paying.
6. Look at recent issues. Do the papers look like work you would cite? Predatory journals read wrong within thirty seconds.

That last check is underrated. Open the current issue and read two abstracts. You will know.

The summary

Unsolicited flattery, guaranteed speed, hidden fees, implausible scope, unverifiable board, and an impact factor from an organisation nobody has heard of. Any two together and stop.

Then verify positively: Think. Check. Submit., DOAJ, COPE's own member list, and search the indexing databases yourself. Use the ISSN Portal if you have any doubt that the site is the journal it claims to be.

Five minutes, before you submit. The alternative is work you cannot get back.