Publishing your research

What is a Predatory Publisher?

A predatory publisher is one that exploits authors by exploiting the academic need to publish but offers little to no reward for authors or others using their services. These publishers:

• Are in it to make money and seem legit by charging low fees for publication. Many times this will look like an "open access" fee 
• May be predatory due to neglect, inexperience or mismanagement of the material that they publish
• Engage in deceptive and unethical business practices
• Make false claims about their journals impact factor
• Make false claims about their peer-review process. This often looks like a claim of unreasonably fast peer-review
• Have no commitments to preserve your work
• May knowingly publish plagiarized or fabricated studies

Common Misconceptions about Open Access Publishing & Predatory Publishers

We would like to acknowledge the damage that deceptive, predatory publishing has done to the reputation of legitimate Open Access publishing, and stress the value of choosing OA journals and open science practices to better the dissemination of research, facilitation of knowledge sharing across global scientific communities and the general population.

• Open Access does not mean poor journal quality
• Open Access does not mean a paper has not been peer reviewed
• Open Access does not mean that authors have paid to publish without editorial or scientific scrutiny
• Open Access does not always require payment from authors

It is unfortunate that predatory publishing has influenced negative attitudes towards Open Access.