Predatory publishers promise prompt, easy publication. The hidden charges come later, as well as the realization that the journal has no real standing or quality control. Not only is this bad for potential authors, it’s bad for knowledge, flooding the market with inferior information made to superficially resemble the information you need.

Imagine this scenario: You receive an email from a seemingly respectable journal inviting you to submit a paper for publication. You’ve wanted to publish on this topic for some time, and this journal promises you a quick review and publication within a few months. As a new author, you are thrilled . . . that is, until you get charged an outrageous processing fee upon turning the article in. You’ve just fallen victim to a predatory publisher.

Unfortunately, this scenario is becoming all too common. These journals are often difficult to spot, with their professional-looking Web sites and names that sound legitimate, if a little vague. In fact, just recently at AJN, we stumbled across a Web site featuring a journal that looked a lot like ours and had a very similar name. (Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado, has been tracking predatory publishers since 2009 and maintains a list of them on his Web site, Scholarly Open Access.)

In our April issue, editor-in-chief […]