Predatory publishing can be difficult to define, though predatory publishers usually share some characteristics. A predatory publisher is an opportunistic publishing venue that exploits the academic need to publish but offers little reward for those using their services. A predatory publisher's goal is to make money, usually in the form of fees they charge authors to publish their work, while also making false claims or promises about the quality of the work they publish and/or the impact of the journal, and generally failing to adhere to accepted best practices in scholarly publishing. Predatory publishers often aggressively solicit manuscripts from scholars, charge fees with no transparency about their purpose, and/or have little or no quality control (peer review, editing, etc) over their content.
