Spotlight: Predatory Journals and the E-Resources Predatory Journals Project

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Behind the Scenes: The E-Resources Predatory Journals Project -

If you’ve ever searched for journal articles online, you’ve probably come across terms like open access or peer reviewed. But there’s another term worth knowing — predatory journals.

These are the questionable ones that charge hefty author fees but also skip proper peer review. They look professional, but underneath, they’re more about profit than genuine scholarship. For students and researchers, that’s a major concern — because poor-quality or misleading research can slip through their pages and end up being cited as fact.

Over the last year, our E-Resources team has been working on a project to identify and flag potentially predatory journals appearing in our library systems. It’s a bit like academic detective work. We’ve been pulling information from sources like Beall’s List and PredatoryJournals.org, reviewing titles one by one, and removing the more obvious offenders from our discovery platform.

It might sound simple, but it’s not always. Some journals sit in a grey area — they might raise a few red flags yet still publish some decent content, while others are outright scams that have perfected the look of a legitimate academic journal. Spotting the difference takes time and care that we are removing only predatory journals from discovery and not quality OA resources.  It will continue to be an ongoing project as every year, more journals are added to the lists.

How You Can Help

If you ever come across a journal in our system that feels a bit “off,” trust your instincts. Here are a few warning signs to watch out for:

  • Peer review that seems to happen almost instantly
  • Vague or missing editorial details
  • Editorial board members who are difficult to verify
  • High publication fees with little transparency
  • Pushy or overly flattering email invitations to publish or join editorial boards

If you notice anything suspicious, please let us know — send a quick email to eresourcesadmin@universityofgalway.ie or log a ServiceDesk ticket. Even if you’re not sure, we’d rather take a look. Every report helps us keep the system accurate and trustworthy for everyone.

 Why It Matters

By keeping an eye out together, we can help maintain the credibility of our discovery system. It’s all part of supporting academic integrity — making sure that when you find research through the University of Galway Library, you can trust it.

If you’d like to learn more about predatory publishing and how to protect your own work, here are some helpful links and guides:

Together, we can keep our academic resources clean, reliable, and genuinely useful — because high-quality research deserves a high-quality home.



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