Tips on how to find a reliable, stable, open access journal:

• Ask a librarian!
• Use Beall's List* as a guideline; use his criteria to analyze your potential publishers
• Is the journal listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)?
• Is the publisher a member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA)?
• Does the journal have an editorial board?
• Is it affiliated with a familiar university, scholarly society, or commercial publisher?

Check out this guide from Ryerson University Library and Archives on Evaluating Open Access Journals.

*Beall's List was removed from the web in January 2017 and is now only available via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. While it remains a good starting point for researching predatory journals, the list will no longer be reviewed or updated.

Predatory publishers are thinly veiled scams to make money from article processing charges. Many will frequently market themselves as producing open access journals without providing any traditional publishing services, such as peer review, copyediting, and proofreading, or falsifying attempts at these services.

Famous examples of articles accepted to such journals include:

• "Cuckoo for Coco Puffs? The surgical and neoplastic role of cacao extract in breakfast cereals", created by random text generator and was accepted to 17 medical journals in 2015

and

• the highly scientific "Get me off Your Fucking Mailing List", a 10 page paper consisting of only those seven words, written in 2005 but accepted for publication in 2014.

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