Publishing in black and white: the relevance of listing of scientific journals

Scientific publishing, including in the field of Rheumatology, is evolving rapidly. Predatory journals are one of the major threats to contemporary publishing, especially to eager and naïve authors. In this narrative review, we discuss mechanisms that authors can employ to white list genuine scientific journals and blacklist “predatory” ones. Inclusion of a journal in reputed indices such as Medline (but not just Pubmed), Web of Science, Scopus or Embase raises the likelihood that the journal is genuine, more so if it is included in the current Journal Citation Reports. Other commercially available whitelists also exist, so also whitelists published by regulatory authorities in some countries. A commercially available blacklist has emerged since the very useful Beall’s blacklist became defunct. In the absence of access to a whitelist or blacklist, certain characteristics such as repeated email solicitations for articles with an extremely narrow deadline from unknown sources, lack of inclusion in reputed indices, journals not published or endorsed by national or international society and scarcity of currently published articles should render authors suspicious of the genuine nature of a journal. National societies should work together to generate subject-specific (including Rheumatology specific) whitelists that can be available free of cost to authors from all over the world.