Predatory journals: what can we do to protect their prey?
Authors, institutions, funders, and editors must be alert to the dangers A growing number of entities misrepresent themselves as scholarly journals for financial gain despite not meeting scholarly publishing standards.12 As editors and members of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), we receive queries about these “predatory” or “pseudo” entities and are subject to their deception when they target our authors and reviewers. The number of predatory journals is difficult to accurately determine but was estimated at more than 15 000 in 2021.3 While the ICMJE recommendations include warnings about predatory publishing,4 the committee believes that the large number of increasingly bold predatory entities warrants shining a bright light on them and considering actions stakeholders can take to counter their deceptive efforts. The practices that these entities employ include aggressive solicitation of manuscript submissions; the promise of extremely rapid turnaround t
