Recognising and avoiding predatory journals

A predatory journal will publish almost anything for a fee, and from its invitation and its website it can look much like a legitimate open-access journal. This branch covers what a medical writer needs to tell such a journal, or a predatory meeting, from a legitimate one and to keep work out of it, divided by the question each part answers: what makes a journal predatory, why the business grew and what it harms, what publishing in one costs the author, how to check a venue before submitting, the watchlists kept of them, and how writers and their associations respond. How open access and its charges work in legitimate journals is left to access and publishing models, choosing among legitimate journals to choosing a journal to submit a manuscript to, and reforms to peer review to open and post-publication peer review.

• What makes a journal predatory — the definitions, among them the 2019 consensus definition, how a predatory journal differs from a legitimate open-access journal and what it does for the fee, and the business model
• Why predatory publishing grew and what it does to the literature — how large the business has grown and what drives it, who publishes in predatory journals, the stings that show how little it takes to be published, and the harm to the scientific literature, to trust in science and to medical writers' work
• What publishing in a predatory journal costs the author — the credibility of the work, a paper that is hard to withdraw and may not stay available, the time and money spent, the author's reputation and name in the publisher's hands, and the consequences listed for an individual researcher
• Checking a journal or meeting before submitting — treating an unsolicited invitation as a reason to look, look-alike and hijacked venues, weighing a venue, the directories, lists and tools, and the criteria and signs of a predatory journal and of a predatory meeting
• Beall's list and the watchlists that followed it — where the term and Beall's list came from, how the list was built and received, the pressure on Beall and the list's closure, the archived list, Cabells' whitelist and blacklist and the other lists that followed, and Beall's critique of open access and case for credentialing journals
• How writers and their associations respond to predatory publishing — the authors' responsibility to evaluate a journal and why the duty falls on medical writers, what the 2019 joint position statement of AMWA, EMWA and ISMPP asks of writers, how aware medical writers are, and how the associations, libraries, publishers and social media raise awareness, and the coordinated response stopping predatory journals will need