
Pre-submission tool flags suspect journals
A free platform called Journal Trends analyzes journal publishing patterns using OpenAlex data and the Problematic Paper Screener to help researchers identify potentially unreliable journals before submitting manuscripts, highlighting red flags such as sudden surges in papers from a single country; while spikes aren’t definitive proof of misconduct, the tool can aid due diligence and integrity investigations and inform delisting and indexing considerations like Scopus.