One of the first steps in identifying whether a journal is legitimate or predatory is to take a look at which databases index the journal. This has the added benefit of giving you a good idea of the reach you can expect for your article if you published with a legitimate journal.
While most journals say on their website where they are indexed, predatory journals may be misleading in this area, so it's best to double check in the database itself.
An additional thing to check for identifying if a journal is predatory or not is the type of impact measure it has, if any. The metric you are likely most familiar with is Impact Factor. This is a specific measure given by Clarivate's Journal Citation Reports to journals indexed in the Web of Science, it's companion databases. Not all journals will be captured, but many will.
If the journal you're searching for is not in Journal Citation Reports, it may have an impact factor elsewhere. Two others to check are the SCImago Journal Ranking (SJR) and the H5 Index, which can be found in Google Scholar.
If the journal isn't found in any of these three places, there is significant reason to be suspect.
There are a few places you can check to see if a specific journal has previously been flagged as predatory.
Here are a couple more strategies you can try.
Elle Covington (they/them), Assistant Professor Evidence Synthesis Librarian, UNL Libraries, originally published 8/7/23; updated 12/3/25
