Traceable Clues
- Invitation for manuscript submission from unknown sources－Authors who succeed in submitting their article for the first time are especially prone to receiving invites to publish their manuscript in international journals or conferences.
- Alternative Impact Factor－Predatory journals frequently claim to have impact factor (IF). They use IF calculation formula but the scope of journals they take into account is completely different. For example, OMICS's Journal of Neonatal and Pediatric Medicine (ISSN:2572-4983) claim to have a journal impact factor of 0.8823, but on another web page, it says in an inconspicuous area that the journal's impact factor is based on the number of times cited by Google Scholar, and further analysis reveals that Google Scholar did not cite the journal at all.
- Journals with the same name but different publishers－For example, Neuropsychiatry published in Open Access Journals **Neuropsychiatry (ISSN:1758-2008)** claims to have an impact factor (IF) of 4.778 in 2016. However, another journal with the same name and ISSN but published by a different publisher had ceased publication in 2015. Because IF was based on the values calculated for the past two years, the IF of this journal is still traceable in the 2016 JCR.
- Unusual Journal Websites－These websites contain fuzzy images, wrong texts, editors of unknown origin, and a journal's name is inconsistent in the text about the journal. For example, the word "journal" is sometimes included and other times excluded.
- Review response is unusually fast－So fast it feels like they cannot wait to publish your work. They will even pester you with phone calls to negotiate price or force you to submit if you ignore them.
Created by librarian Jeffrey Beall, the Beall's List of Potential Predatory Journals and Publishers is continuously updated by succeeding supporters, providing web links to relevant news and other important lists. When verifying a journal/publisher, check the list of PUBLISHERS and then check the list of STANDALONE JOURNALS. There are no repeats in these two lists.
