Predatory journals and publishers at a glance: Take apart or take over?

Abstract

Have you ever received and been seduced by such attractive and flattering messages from editors? " .. Please accept our apologies if you receive multiple copies of this call for papers. This email is for Academic/Editorial information and not for commercial purposes. This e-mail was sent to you as an active researcher .." Or "… Already we contacted you earlier. Since we have not received any response from you, we are taking the liberty to resend the same regarding the submission of manuscript towards the Journal …..". The answer is obviously "Yes! ". Those beautiful messages come from a plethora of journals that have sprung up during the last few years, very talented to attract, becoming more and more annoying, under the name of "Predatory journals" as called by Beall, a librarian at Auraria Library and associate professor at the University of Colorado Denver, who compiled, from 2011 to January 2017, annual lists of potential, possible, or probably predatory scholarly open access journals.