Predatory publishing

Predatory publishing, also write-only publishing^[2][3] or deceptive publishing,^[4] is an exploitative academic publishing business model that involves charging publication fees to authors while only superficially checking articles for quality and legitimacy, and without providing editorial and publishing services that legitimate academic journals provide, whether open access or not.^[1] The rejection rate of predatory journals is low, but seldom zero. The phenomenon of "open access predatory publishers" was first noticed by Jeffrey Beall, when he described "publishers that are ready to publish any article for payment".^[5] However, criticisms about the label "predatory" have been raised.^[6] A lengthy review of the controversy started by Beall appears in The Journal of Academic Librarianship.^[7]

Predatory publishers are so regarded because scholars are tricked into publishing with them, although some authors may be aware that the journal is poor quality or even fraudulent but publish in them anyway.^[a] New scholars from developing countries are said to be especially at risk of being misled by predatory publishers.^[9][10][11] According to one study, 60% of articles published in predatory journals receive no citations over the five-year period following publication.^[12][13]

Actors seeking to maintain the scholarly ecosystem have sought to minimize the influence of predatory publishing through the use blacklists such as Beall's List and Cabell's blacklist, as well as through whitelists such as the Directory of Open Access Journals.

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