While the Online Research Collections team recommends publishing Open Access whenever possible and when funder mandates require it, it is crucial to emphasise that the decision of where to publish is at the discretion of the author(s). It is important to choose the best possible showcase for your academic work, but it can be difficult to choose the right scholarly journal for your article. If you are a new researcher, or are researching in a new or unfamiliar area, then the guidance provided by Think, Check, Submit may be useful.
Open Access funding provided by grant funders may be denied for journals and publishers that lack transparent processes and appear to exist solely as a means of collecting Open Access fees (known as predatory Open Access journals).
Not every journal with poor peer review and copy editing is a fraudulent or predatory journal, and deciding if it is can be a subjective decision. Some lists of predatory journals exist, but the formative list, Beall’s List, is no longer published, mostly due to these questions of subjectivity.
If you are considering publishing in a journal that is new to you, or that you think may not be entirely legitimate, contact gro@gold.ac.uk to discuss your concerns before agreeing to publish or pay any fees. You can also use Think, Check, Submit to help you choose which journals to publish in.