Check a journal before you trust it
Type a journal name or ISSN. We will tell you whether it appears in the registries we track and what it discloses — the facts you would otherwise have to assemble from four different websites.
Not in our data — what that does and does not mean
We track 11,447 biomedical journals that have an ISSN, a real publication record and recent activity. A journal missing from that set is worth a closer look, but absence is not proof of anything on its own. There are honest reasons to be missing: a new journal, a very small one, a regional title outside the major indexes, or one that publishes outside biomedicine.
What matters is which checks fail. Work through the list below on the journal's own website. If several of these fail at once, that pattern is the signal — not any single item.
The checks that actually separate journals
Each of these is expanded — why it matters, how to actually do it, and what failure looks like — in the full guide: How to verify a journal is legitimate.
Find the ISSN, then verify it independently
Every real journal has an ISSN. Take the number from the journal's site and look it up at theISSN Portal. If the registered title does not match, or there is no record, stop there.
Check the indexes yourself, not the journal's claims
Journals routinely claim indexing they do not have. Search the journal inPubMed's journal catalogueand in DOAJdirectly. A badge on their homepage is not evidence; a record in the index is.
Read the fee page before you submit, not after acceptance
The single most common way researchers get hurt is an invoice that appears only once the paper is accepted, when withdrawing means starting over. If you cannot find the charge in writing before submitting, treat that as the answer.
Look up three editorial board members
Do they exist, do they work where the journal says, and do they publish in this field? Fabricated or unwitting board members are common. Some journals list real academics who never agreed to serve.
Read a recent issue
Open two or three published articles. Are they on topic, in competent English, and properly reviewed? A journal that publishes anything will show you that in five minutes of reading.
Be suspicious of speed
Genuine peer review takes weeks. “Acceptance within 72 hours” is not efficiency, it is the absence of review. Equally, an unsolicited email flattering your recent paper and inviting a submission is a marketing funnel, not an invitation.
Check what happens if the publisher disappears
Ask whether articles are archived with a preservation service and assigned DOIs. Without both, your paper can simply vanish, and a vanished paper does not count for anything.
Why we do not publish a blacklist
You will find lists online naming journals and publishers as “predatory.” We do not maintain one. The best-known such list, kept by the librarian Jeffrey Beall, was taken offline in 2017 after sustained legal pressure from publishers it named. Those lists also age badly: a journal that was careless in 2019 may have changed hands, and a name on a list follows it regardless.
Verifiable facts are more useful and more durable. If a journal is not in any registry, will not state its fee, declares no review model and archives nothing, you do not need us to attach a label — you already have your answer, and you have it in a form you could defend to a supervisor or an ethics committee.