Dubious journals, also known as predatory journals, pursue a business model in which you are offered to publish your scientific work for a fee, without a quality assurance process and editorial work, as is usual for serious journals.
Contents of these dubious journals are often not indexed in the relevant professional databases and thus remain hidden from the professional community.
Features of predatory journals include rapid pay-to-publish models without rigorous peer-review, fake editorial boards, falsely listing respected scientists, fraudulent impact factors, journal titles that are deceptively similar to those of legitimate journals, paid review articles that promote fake science, and aggressive spam invitations to submit articles, including outside a researcher’s expertise.
Furthermore, it is common practice for predatory journals to exploit the “author-pays” model of open access for financial gain.
Think.Check.Submit can help you choose the right journal to publish your work. It provides a list of questions to help analyse whether the chosen journal fulfils all the requirements for reliable publication.