LAUSR

Predatory publishing, a destructive phenomenon that has been highlighted and discussed since 2011, is the consequence of the gold (author-pays) open access publishing model [1]. Predatory journals are money-making stations characterized by charging publication fees and an absence of ‘true’ peer review [2]. These journals and publishers have grown to a very large number in recent years [2,3]. The general assumption is that the most common victims of such journals are young, naive, early career researchers, especially from developing countries, but this may not always be the case [3-5]. Recent evidences suggest that predatory publishing is a global phenomenon affecting authors from both developing and developed countries, and even experienced authors get duped [5,6]. How can we deal with these publishers and how can authors avoid getting duped by them? This essay presents a few incidents to build on for answering these questions.