Publisher ethics and predatory publishing
Choosing where to publish isn’t only about maximising visibility, impact, or avoiding predatory journals. Whether you’re submitting your own work or agreeing to peer review, it’s also about making sure the publisher’s ethics and practices align with your values and expectations - and those of Deakin.
Find out more by reading Deakin's Open Research Position Statement.
Understanding publisher ethics
Publisher ethics involves a broad set of values and professional standards that shape how research is published, who gets to access it, and who ultimately benefits. Ethical publishers commit to fairness, transparency, and integrity in the way they operate, while also putting policies in place to prevent misconduct and protect the credibility of scholarly communication.
Identifying trusted publishers
Click on the plus (+) icons below to learn more
Is it clear how the publisher runs their business?
Ethical publishers are transparent about their business models, including how much profit they make, how publication fees are set, and how fees reflect value for the services provided. They aim to design open access models that balance sustainability with equity, ensuring that authors are not excluded from publishing due to high costs.
- Read about the publisher’s business model
- Review the publisher’s stance on open research, equity, profit margins, fee transparency, and fairness of their open access models.
Who owns the work a journal has published?
Ethics also extend to fairness in licensing and copyright, such as allowing authors to retain rights to their work and using open licences that enable reuse. Publishers’ embargo policies on self-archiving (repository or green open access) should avoid unnecessarily long delays that restrict public access to publicly funded research.
- Read the publisher’s open access and copyright policies
- Review the publisher’s stance on sharing, self-archiving, and green open access embargoes.
Are researchers paying twice to publish open?
Publishers using “hybrid” open access models charge authors to make specific articles open while keeping the remaining content behind paywalls. These authors’ institutions often also pay a subscription to access the closed journal content. Deakin Library’s Read & Publish agreements cover the open access APC in a large selection of hybrid journals so double payment does not occur. Outside of these agreements and as noted in the Open Research Position Statement, Deakin does not support the payment of APCs to make a single article open in a hybrid journal.
- Read the publisher’s open access policies
- Review the publisher’s stance on institutional open access agreements and hybrid journal fee double dipping.
How does the publisher respond to research integrity issues?
Publishers must have robust policies and procedures to address misconduct, identify research integrity issues, and take swift and appropriate action, in line with the best practice standards of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) or the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).
- Read the publisher’s research integrity policies
- Review the publisher’s stance on misconduct, retractions, and how they identify and take action against systematic manipulation of scholarly publishing, such as paper mill activity, authorship for sale, image manipulation and other issues.
Additionally, the choice of peer review models, the diversity and inclusion of editorial boards, the treatment of complaints, and the handling of conflicts of interest all reflect a publisher’s ethical stance. Ultimately, evaluating a publisher’s ethics means looking at how well their practices align with principles of transparency, accountability, inclusivity, and the public good - rather than solely with maximising profit.
Tip
Consider society journals or those with community-controlled (diamond) publishing models (free to publish, free to read). Offer peer review or editorial services only to publishers whose practices meet your expectations. Withdraw support for those with objectionable practices, as some editorial boards have done.
Predatory publishing
While there is no widely agreed upon definition of predatory publishing, it broadly refers to a range of deceptive practices by publishers or journals that exploit researchers – often by charging fees for publishing articles without providing editorial and peer review services. These publishers typically prioritise profit over academic integrity, advertising rapid publication and minimal review in exchange for substantial fees.
Predatory publishing behaviour is not unique to open access publishing, and it continues to undermine quality research - making it harder for researchers to navigate the growing distraction of low-quality (and completely fabricated) papers.
Click the plus (+) icons below to learn about red flags you can keep in mind when a evaluating a open access journal for predatory publishing practices.
Adapted from "About predatory publishing" by Think.Check.Submit, licensed under CC BY 4.0
Activity overview
This interactive image hotspot provides information to help determine if an open access journal exhibits predatory publishing. Each hotspot explores strategies to evaluating an open access journal. Hotspots are displayed as plus (+) icons that can be clicked, to present the information.
Hotspot 1
Misleading journal identity
- A journal title which can be easily confused with another journal
- False claims of being indexed in major services like PubMed or DOAJ
- Displays of unofficial impact factors
- Publishes very wide scope or out-of-scope articles
- Publishes nonsense articles
Hotspot 2
Lack of transparency
- Unclear ownership of the journal
- No publisher address or contact information
- Hides information on charges
- Lack of information on the policies of the journal, such as peer review, licensing and copyright
Hotspot 3
Issues with peer review
- Advertises very fast times from submission to publication
- Spams researchers with many emails inviting submissions, often unrelated to expertise
- Poor or non-existent editing of articles (many spelling mistakes or very poor grammar)
- No editorial board is listed, or the editorial board comprises dead or retired scholars or scholars who are not specialised in the topic
Adapted from "About predatory publishing" by Think.Check.Submit, licensed under CC BY 4.0
How to identify trusted publishers
One of the best ways to identify trusted publishers for your research is to use the checklists at Think. Check. Submit to evaluate what you know about a particular journal or publisher. For further information check out this brief video (1:58) on Think. Check. Submit.
Further resources
- Retraction Watch
Tracks article retractions, editorial board resignations, and writes about journals, publishers, and many issues affecting scholarly publishing. - Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)
Provides guidelines, resources, and support for best practice in scholarly publishing. - Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA)
Shares a range of open access publishing resources. - International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)
Provides recommendations for the conduct, reporting, editing, and publication of scholarly work in medical journals. - Rising number of ‘predatory’ academic journals undermines research and public trust in scholarship
Article from The Conversation on the rising number of predatory journals in academia, challenging scholars to determine which publications are legitimate. - Predatory journals: no definition, no defence
Leading scholars and publishers from ten countries have agreed a definition of predatory publishing that can protect scholarship.