These tools provide useful food for thought when evaluating the legitimacy of a journal or conference.
Predatory journals are pseudo-academic journals that exist for the sole purpose of collecting fees from authors. They have emerged to exploit the Open Access publishing business model whereby authors pay a fee to make their work freely available to the public. Predatory journals are a concern because they are sometimes difficult to identify. They pose as high quality Open Access journals but fail to deliver meaningful editorial and peer review.
Predatory journals are becoming increasingly sophisticated and difficult to identify. They can have ISSNs, assign DOIs, and have slick, professional-looking websites. This page links to several checklists and tools to help authors think critically about places they might submit their work. Beyond these, critical things to consider when evaluating a journal include:
Look for lies:
Look for "fluff":
Look at publications:
Here are two "allow lists" of journals/publishers considered legitimate and one "block list" of journals/publishers to avoid. The methods of composing these lists are not perfect and inclusion or absence is not a guarantee. For more information, consult: Strinzel, M., Severin, A., Milzow, K., & Egger, M. (2019). Blacklists and whitelists to tackle predatory publishing: A cross-sectional comparison and thematic analysis. MBio, 10(3), e00411-19.