The criteria to select journals and invalid and fake publishers
• lack of active editorial board
• lack of scientific review
• Two or several journals have the same editorial board
• Lack of geographical variety among editorial board members especially journals claiming to be international
• Not being indexed in accredited and academic indexing systems
• Lack of compatibility among journal’s title, targets and missions
• Announcing fake impact factors on journal’s website on behalf of accredited international indexing systems
• Fake claims about being indexed in accredited citation systems
• Receiving publishing expense from authors to rapidly publish the article
• Lack of a rich history
• Covering an extensive range of subjects
• Publishing a large number of articles in each issue
• Not mentioning the postal address and phone number
• misusing the developed countries’ names in the title of journal
• Lack of electronic submission system
• Lack or inadequacy of authors’ guide
• Using names or logos very similar to accredited journals
• The same editorial board for all the journals of a publisher
• Quick review (sometimes less than 12 hours) and ignoring major errors in the article
• Sending “call for papers” messages to researchers’ email address
• A weak website and a very simple article submission format
A journal with any of these criteria is liable to be included in the black list. A journal with such a feature will be accurately analyzed; Simultaneous and accumulative presence of several of above-mentioned criteria will result in transferring the journal into the black list.