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To start your evaluation, look at issues of the potential journals, other books/papers in the series, or other content published by the publisher. Scan tables of contents and check their Information for Authors or Submission pages as you ask yourself...
You may have encountered the term "predatory publishing." This term has been and continues to be used to identify low-quality or scam publications (Berger and Cirasella describe these publications as, "primarily fee-collecting operations—they exist for that purpose and only incidentally publish articles, generally without rigorous peer review, despite claims to the contrary.") Bad actors within academic publishing certainly exist; however, the designation of predatory is unfairly and excessively applied to publishers in the Global South and those for whom English is not a first language, as well as those whose enterprises are newer and less established. Low quality publishing, found across the globe, is not the same thing as predation, and it is harmful to assign nefarious intent to organizations that may not, for any number of reasons and circumstances, adhere to publishing practices and standards defined by corporatized Global North publishers and institutions. Therefore, we recommend avoiding this terminology to describe publishers unless their behaviors are truly predatory.
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This guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License by Carolyn Caffrey and Dana Opsina.