| Abstract: | Questionable journals represent an increasing problem in scholarly communication. The warnings about such journals are plentiful, but the methods used to identify them vary a great deal and make it difficult to accurately determine which journals are fraudulent or simply of low quality. This article presents an overview of the existing frameworks for identifying questionable journals and discussions around them. Most of the frameworks rely on describing the journals under investigation according to a set of criteria, and some can even be turned into a metric or mechanism. The development of frameworks for identifying questionable journals has so far been characterized by a great diversity in format, length, and content. Generally, the frameworks come with little information on development, validation, and reliability. The consequences of prolific tool development are discussed, and a recommendation for testing such frameworks is proposed. |
