Fraudulent Journals
Three fraudulent Journals sites
This site, Predatory Journals, deals solely with journals and is allied to two other sites, Predatory Publishers, the content of which is self-explanatory, and Scholarly Outlaws which deals with conferences and academics. Why do I have three sites when one will do? It is because although one will do as far as content is concerned, one won’t do when it comes to the needs of a searcher who will typically be searching for predatory journals or predatory publishers. It is all a matter of being visible. There is little point in presenting the results of many years of investigation, if nobody sees it when they look for this sort of information. Of course, information about academics who are caught up, willingly or otherwise, in the scam scholarly publishing industry is a departure from the standard interest in publishers or journals. It is not available anywhere else. Nor should there be a website titled ‘Predatory Academics,’ because the word ‘predatory’ is inappropriate. Many and perhaps most of them are unwitting victims rather than collaborators.
Other fraudulent journals sites
There are other sites devoted to providing lists of predatory journals and/or publishers, but they are in competition with each other or with this one. They are all basically on the same page, trying to foster awareness of the predatory journal menace and assisting aspiring authors, especially those from developing regions, with the task of choosing honest and professional journals to which to send their manuscripts. The most important of these for historical reasons is Beall’s list (beallslist.net). Sadly that is now the least important one for practical application because the original is far too out of date, having remained unattended since 2017. It has been added to intermittently by a dedicated anonymous curator, but hundreds of publishers and journals that no longer exist have not been removed and, more importantly, there is no direct justification for the inclusion of this or that publisher or journal which is a serious problem in its own right besides implying that they are all equal in terms of violation of publishing ethics and culpability in general when in fact there is no comparison between the most and the least ‘predatory.’ The next most important is Cabells Predatory Reports, then there are two sites that do what beallslist.net does, sharing the same drawbacks. One is predatoryjournals.org, the other is KScien. I shall write about all of these in detail elsewhere.