Occasionally Open Access journals have a bad reputation, because there are also black sheep among the Open Access journals. So-called predatory journals are a fraudulent business model that is operated by certain Open Access publishers. They appear to be fully fledged scientific specialist journals. They collect the publication fees that are customary in the Open Access segment from the authors, but do not carry out any editorial and journalistic services, such as a proper Peer Review, that one would expect from a reputable specialist journal.

We have summarised in a checklist how you can recognise predatory journals. The ZBW has also compiled a handout on the topic of predatory publishing  (PDF).