Hijacked journals: Tips for young researchers, to detect and avoid them

by the academic community and governments

(Center for Scientific Integrity). 3 Simply, it is a dynamic google sheet (i.e. the sheet is updated when new hijacked journals are discovered). The sheet can be accessed via: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ak985WGOgGbJRJbZFanoktAN_UF eExpE/edit#gid=5255084 • Beall's list website: It presents a prominent list of predatory open access publishers and journals extracted from the Jeffry Beall's blog. On the same website, the hijacked journals page can be accessed by following the link: https://beallslist.net/hijacked-jo urnals/ Although they supply helpful information to young researchers, the above-mentioned lists are not cover all the hijacked journals, especially those that are emerged recently (Table 1).

By reviewing the journal website
The hijackers mostly hide important information, such as contact details of the journal and editors, or use non-institutional and commercial email addresses (e.g. yahoo and gmail). In addition, for journals that use the digital object identifier or DOI, when following the DOI link or going to (https://doi.org/DOI, the DOI should be replaced by the DOI number that begins with 10.xxx) it will direct the user to the same landing page of the article in case of legitimate journals. If the journal is hijacked, the link will direct the user to a page telling him/her that the prefix is not found or something like that. Moreover, the hijacked journals ask the authors to send their manuscripts via email and not by using the submission system.

3-By accessing journal via publisher website
This is mainly depends on the journal's profile in the indexing database (e.g. Scopus). The following steps should be followed to assess whether the journal is hijacked: • Go to the journal's profile in the indexing database • Find and copy the publisher's name • Search the copied name in google, and go to the official website of the publisher • On the publisher's website, search the journal's page or website (usually the journals be under tabs "Publications", "Resources" or "Journals")

5-By advanced search and AI
Some other search methods and algorithm-based methods are introduced by some researchers. [4][5][6] Mainly, they depend on the time of registering the hijacked websites.

DECLARATIONS Hussein A. Abid is a Medical Laboratory Scientist and Researcher at Al-Nahrain University (2021 to present) and a former Medical Laboratory
Scientist and Researcher at Middle Technical University (2016-2021). As of late 2021, he served as a person in charge of the academic journals of Al-Nahrain University to improve the Editorial Processes and Policies and to achieve Best Editorial Practices. In his field, he has significant contributions in reputed academic journals as an author, top reviewer, and academic editor. He is interested in biochemistry, immunology, and microbiology topics, mainly in reporting novel biomarkers and disease diagnoses.
Emad A. Yousif is a Professor of Chemistry at Al-Nahrain University since 2015. He got his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Al-Nahrain University (Baghdad, Iraq) and served as Head of the Chemistry Department at the College of Science at Al-Nahrain University for years. He has considerable expertise in academic publishing and published more than 200 papers in internationally reputed journals, in his field. His research focuses on the preparation of inorganic complexes and the study of their medicinal and industrial applications.