Predatory open-access publishing is an exploitative open-access academic publishing business model that involves charging publication fees to authors without providing the editorial and publishing services associated with legitimate journals (open access or not). The idea that they are "predatory" is based on the view that academics are tricked into publishing with them, though some authors may be aware that the journal is poor quality or even fraudulent.

Characteristics of predatory open-access publishing:

• Accepting articles quickly with little or no peer review or quality control
• Notifying academics of article fees only after papers are accepted
• Aggressively campaigning for academics to submit articles or serve on editorial boards
• Listing academics as members of editorial boards without their permission, or appointing fake academics to editorial boards
• Mimicking the name or web site style of more established journals
• Using ISSN improperly.
• Citing fake or non-existent impact factors/metrics

(Source: Wikipedia)

Please, choose a journal or publisher carefully before submitting an article. The library staff can provide you with information on the background, quality or impact factor of a journal. Journal impact factor lists can be found on several websites, which sometimes my be false or incorrect. Impact factors, calculated yearly, are officially published in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR), which is an annual publication by Clarivate Analytics (previously the intellectual property of Thomson Reuters).

Further reading:

Librarian and researcher Jeffrey Beall’s blog (archive available from 2012 till 15 Jan 2017):

Scholarly Open Access: Critical analysis of scholarly open-access publishing

John Bohannon: Who’s Afraid of Peer Review?
Science, Vol 342, 4 October 2013. p. 60-65.
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