How to Spot Fake Journal: 10 Steps to Identify Predatory Journals

Nowadays, with overload information on the web, it is common to come across information and questionable content. This scenario is called fake news (for news), fake conference (for events), and predatory journals (for suspicious academic journals). Predatory journals explore the model of academic productivism, meeting the need for speed on the part of researchers in publishing, publish, or perish. A device created by academic immediacy. This study focused on analyzing the theme through methods and tools for the identification of predatory journals. A model is proposed for identifying these journals, using already established websites, databases, and repertoires. After monitoring somes emails between January and April 2020, we identified a series of patterns in the forms of communication of these fake editorial boards. As a result of this research we suggest a ten practical recommendations steps to identify predatory journals: 1) ISSN; 2) inclusion in predatory journal lists; 3) web page and domain; 4) editorial information (call for papers, previous issues; indexing, plagiarism identification, editorial board members); 5) standards of published papers; 6) DOIs, and ORCID identification; 7) indexing status; 8) Article Processing Charge; 9) spelling and typographical errors on the web page and the papers; 10) If none of these actions have any effect and you still have doubted about the seriousness of the journal, consult a specialist on the subject.