In general, we advise a “checklist” approach to analyzing whether a journal is engaged in unethical practices, rather than a “list” approach, particularly if we aren’t sure who runs the list, how they add to the list, and how publishers can apply to remove their names from the list. Although this takes more time, it can allow you to investigate and probe more deeply into the question.
Some useful tools we often recommend can be found below:
A summary of some quality journal criteria and indicators of possible deception follow below. These are not necessarily comprehensive, but they are a starting place.
Quality journal criteria include:
Indicators of possible deception include:
List adapted from "Open Access Journal Quality Indicators" by Grand Valley State University Libraries, which is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0
Content in this guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License and is adapted from "Identifying Appropriate Journals for Publication" by University of Alberta Health Sciences Library which is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0