Predatory Open Access Publishers

Check out Beall’s List of Predatory Open Access Publishers and journals list if you receive manuscript solicitations from purported academic publishers with which you are unfamiliar. University of Colorado librarian Jeffrey Beall expresses caution in dealing with the publishers he lists because invariably they are in it for the money that can be made from charging authors article processing fees. Often these businesses have questionable review practices, bogus editorial boards, and/or their websites mimic the look of well-established publishers. See The Scientist article for Beall’s explanation of how a publisher or journal winds up on one of his lists or read his criteria here.