Have you received emails asking you to submit a paper to a journal or conference? Researchers are increasingly being bombarded by unsolicited solicitations to publish and these should be treated with extreme caution.
The model of authors paying to publish open access has had the undesirable side-effect of spawning an industry of low quality, sometimes fraudulent, publishers and copy-cat journals to try and get authors to part with money to get published. Emails may reference your previous research or conference presentations; the journal may be a close imitation of a well-reputed one in your field. The pressure on academics to publish means that some of these emails will succeed – unfortunately, it is not just the loss of money that is at stake but also reputation:
One dodgy publication in your publication list brings all the others into question. If you are attaching that publication list to a research grant application, it works against the whole submission. (“Are my publications any good?“, The Research Whisperer blog, 22 Mar 2016)
We have already blogged on some places where you can explore legitimate places to publish. The Think, Check, Submit website also offers good advice on approaching the question of where to publish. Their video is below:
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