Table 1.

Main criteria for detection of predatory medical journals

No.	Criteria	Description
1	Contact information	Email addresses of editors are not available and journal uses general email services such as Yahoo or Google.
2	Publication charges	Journal uses different types of charges such as publication charges, page charges, author’s charges, fast track charges.
3	Similar names	Journal uses a name similar to standout and popular medical journals to confuse authors and cheat them.
4	Bogus metric	Journal claims that it has an impact factor, but it is not indexed in Thomson Reuters Web of Science and uses bogus metrics such as Global impact factor (GIF), Scientific indexing service (ISI), etc.
5	Call for paper	Journal sends a huge number of spam emails to receive paper from authors. In these call for papers, journal claims that it has a high impact factor and is indexed in valid databases. Some journals have a general name such as “academic research…” and publish papers in medical sciences.
6	Review and publishing process	The process of review and publishing is not clear and paying publication charges is more important than quality and publishing standards.
7	Number of published papers	The journal publishes many papers in each issue and most of them are outside of journal’s aim and scope.