Predatory Publishing: Resources

Think, Check, Submit is a guideline for detecting a predatory publisher. 

Take your time to investigate the journal. Many predatory journals look like they are trustworthy. When in doubt, ask your Librarians! 

Sites That List Predatory Publishers:

Beall's List: A librarian from the University of Colorado, Jeffery Beall, had kept a list of predatory journals. However, due to legal issues, Beall has stopped maintaining the list.  Some say that an anonymous person has been maintaining; however, it cannot be looked at an authoritative source: https://beallslist.net

Cabells Journalytics Medicine & Predatory Reports: A curated list of medical journals and reports of predatory practices. The who, what, and where for every quality and deceptive publication—all in one place.

Sites That Confirm Legitimate Publishers:

Journal Citation Reports (JCR) 

Some predatory journals claim false impact factors. Check using JCR, the official site for the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) of millions of journals. The site can be used also to find the top journals in a discipline or field, such as cardiology or microbiology.

COPE: Committee on Publication Ethics

COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) is committed to educating and supporting editors, publishers and those involved in publication ethics with the aim of moving the culture of publishing towards one where ethical practices become a normal part of the publishing culture. Check the member list to see if the publisher of a journal you are considering is listed.

Indexes That List Legitimate Journals

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) - DOAJ's mission is to increase the visibility, accessibility, reputation, usage and impact of quality, peer-reviewed, open access scholarly research journals globally, regardless of discipline, geography or language. DOAJ will work with editors, publishers and journal owners to help them understand the value of best practice publishing and standards and to apply those to their own operations. DOAJ is committed to being 100% independent and maintaining its primary services and metadata as free to use or reuse for everyone.

MEDLINE is the National Library of Medicine’s (NLM) premier bibliographic database that contains more than 28 million references to journal articles in life sciences with a concentration on biomedicine. For a list of currently indexed titles, dynamically generated from the NLM Catalog, see List of Journals Indexed for MEDLINE. MEDLINE is an indexed database within PubMed. Predatory journals may say that their journal is indexed in PubMed, but this statement is to misguide you. Instead, you need to check if the journal is indexed in MEDLINE. You may check the list above or search directly in the NLM Catalog. PLEASE NOTE: just because a journal is in the NLM Catalog does not automatically mean it is indexed in MEDLINE. Each journal entry will note whether it is indexed.

Web of Science  - Master Journal List

Society Publishers

American Journal of Occupational Therapy (AJOT) is an official publication of the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA), which represents the professional interests and concerns of more than 230,000 occupational therapists, assistants, and students nationwide.

American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Publications - this website lists several AAP Publications that are credible. 

Journal of Osteopathic Medicine (JOM), founded in September 1901 and known for 119 years as The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association (JAOA), is the premier scholarly, peer-reviewed publication of the osteopathic medical profession. 

Pediatrics - the official peer-reviewed flagship journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)

Physical Therapy & Rehabilitation Journal (PTJ) is the journal for Physical Therapists through the APTA. This journal is the leading international journal for research in physical therapy and related fields. It publishes content for both clinicians and scientists and uses a variety of interactive approaches to communicate the content with the purpose of improving patient care.  

Additional Publisher/journal finders

Jane (Journal/Author Name Estimator) - JANE relies on the data in PubMed, which can contain papers from predatory journals, and therefore these journals can appear in JANE's results. To help identify high-quality journals, JANE now tags journals that are currently indexed in MEDLINE and open access journals approved by the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).

Publisher-specific journal finders (NOTE: these resources will search for only those journals published by that specific publisher, so the recommendations are not comprehensive and are biased toward that publisher.)

• Elsevier 
• SpringerNature
• Wiley (beta version)

Web of Science Manuscript Matcher (requires a free account) - The Master Journal List is an invaluable tool to help you to find the right journal for your needs across multiple indices hosted on the Web of Science platform.