Protecting your research: identifying legitimate journals and avoiding predatory authorship

Steps in publishing a good journal article

1. Conduct ethical, original research and analysis – The author carries out rigorous research grounded in ethical principles and produces meaningful, authentic findings.
2. Select a suitable academic journal – The author evaluates and chooses the most relevant journal and prioritise African journals where appropriate, to support the local publishing industry and contribute to decolonising knowledge.
3. Get feedback from colleagues – Before writing the manuscript, the author seeks informal or formal feedback from peers, mentors, or supervisors to strengthen the work.
4. Prepare the manuscript – The author transforms the research into a structured article following the selected journal’s manuscript guidelines and beware of using generative AI tools to do the work for you – ensure the work reflects your own analysis, voice, and insight.
5. Submit the manuscript – The article is submitted through the journal’s official submission process (e.g. online system or email).
6. Initial editorial review – The editor (or editorial assistant) screens the manuscript and decides whether to reject it, return it for revision, or send it for peer review.
7. Peer review and revisions – Experts in the field review the manuscript. The author may go through several rounds of revision based on reviewer comments until the editor accepts the final version.
8. Formatting and typesetting – The accepted article is formatted into the journal’s publication template for print or digital versions (PDF, HTML, EPUB, etc.).
9. Copy editing – A professional copy editor improves grammar, language, structure, and style while preserving the author’s meaning and voice.
10. Author proofreading: The author reviews the final version to approve corrections or make final adjustments before publication.
11. Printing and distribution – The journal article is printed (for hard copy publications) and/or digitally distributed through the journal’s website or academic databases.
12. Public access and readership – The article becomes available to readers, who may access it through open access, subscriptions, libraries, or institutional repositories.

Predatory journals, how to spot them

Step in legitimate publishing	How predatory journals skip or manipulate the step	Effects
1. Conduct ethical, original research	Accept low-quality, plagiarised, or fabricated research	Undermines academic integrity; spreads false or harmful information
2. Select a suitable, reputable journal	Mislead authors with fake impact factors, names mimicking real journals	Wastes authors’ work; damages reputation; not recognised by institutions
3. Get feedback from colleagues	Discouraged or ignored; no peer dialogue	Research remains unrefined; lacks critical insight
4. Prepare the manuscript carefully	Accept sloppy, unstructured submissions; no guideline enforcement	Poor presentation and readability; hard to follow
5. Initial editorial review	Accepts everything or auto-accepts in hours without real review	No quality control; irrelevant or weak work gets published
6. Peer review and revisions	No real peer review; sometimes fake reviewers or no reviewer feedback	Errors and weak arguments go unchallenged; no scholarly improvement
7. Formatting and typesetting	Minimal or absent; raw documents uploaded as-is	Poor professional appearance; lack of consistency
8. Copyediting	Skipped; language and grammar errors remain	Unprofessional; harder to cite or build on; author credibility reduced
9. Author proofreading	Authors not involved in final review	Mistakes go uncorrected; loss of control over final publication
10. Legitimate distribution and access	Paywalls with little visibility; not indexed in credible databases	Articles not found or cited; little academic impact; hinders knowledge sharing

Predatory writers, how not to be one

Unethical practice by author	How it happens	Consequences
Faking or fabricating data	Inventing results or manipulating data to get desired outcomes	Misleads the field; may cause real-world harm; career-ending if exposed
Plagiarising others’ work	Copying texts, ideas, or results without proper citation	Legal and ethical violation; ruins credibility; retractions and blacklisting
Using AI to write entire articles	Submitting AI-generated content without proper review or attribution	Undermines academic originality; misrepresents authorship
Submitting the same article to multiple journals	Trying to increase chances of acceptance or exposure	Double publishing is unethical; leads to retractions and damaged reputation
Paying for fake authorship	Paying to be added as an author without doing the work	Violates authorship criteria; misrepresents contribution
Adding honorary or guest authors	Including someone as an author just for prestige or connections	Unethical; distorts credit and accountability
Citing excessively for self-promotion	Including irrelevant self-citations or friend-citations to boost metrics	Skews citation impact; unethical metric manipulation
Targeting predatory journals knowingly	Choosing quick, pay-to-publish venues despite knowing they skip peer review	Weakens academic standards; research not respected or used
Ignoring ethical approval for studies	Conducting research without clearance from ethics boards	Violates human subject protections; risks legal consequences
Ghostwriting or outsourcing research	Hiring others to write or conduct research and claiming it as one’s own	Misrepresents authorship and expertise; undermines trust

In conclusion, the steps for legitimate publishing in an academic journal are: