publications - With Beall's List gone, how can I tell if a journal is spam?

Jeffrey Beall removed his list of predatory journals from the internet this past Sunday. While the reasons for his doing this are not yet public, this is a real loss of a valuable service. Does anyone know of similar services available to the general public?

Edit: This other question is definitely relevant, but that approach is more appropriate for finding top journals rather than identifying bottom ones. I.e., following that method would probably exclude lots of valid, lower-tier journals. Are there any approaches to easily identifying a predatory publisher?

Answer

As noted in the question, Beall's list once was a method for identifying predatory publishers. However, the list is no more. A recent Publons blog post addressed how to id predatory journals.

Summarizing their post, here are some methods of identifying predatory journals. Most of their methods are more positive than Beall (i.e., they point out good journals rather than highlight predatory journals):

As noted in the comments, some of these lists may have their credibility issues (e.g., Why do open access consortia affiliate themselves with questionable publishers)

Also, you can do your own "smell" test. Note that none of these a perfect. Possible examples include:

• Check out a journal's webpage and publishers. Often predatory journals have bad webpages or webpages that seem slightly off or wrong. However, some predatory journals do have well polished webpages.


• Is the journal associated with a professional society? If so, have you heard of the society? Professional societies tend to host legitimate journals (although there are likely exceptions). However, some predatory journals use the names of societies and academics without their permission (or use fake societies that sound close to real societies).



• Similarly, is the journal associated with a university?


• Lookup the editorial board. Who is on the board? What is their affiliation (e.g., are they grad students and postdocs?)? Also, check the webpages of the board. Do they list the journal? Some journals list people without their permission.

In summary, there is no single method for verifying journals. Some predatory journals go to great lengths to seem real.

Edit note: This answer was updated based upon feedback from StrongBad, Coburn, and Joce.