How to Spot and Avoid Hijacked Journals: A Guide for Academics - Blog

According to a 2024 Springer Nature industry report, over 300 legitimate academic journals have been successfully cloned or hijacked by fraudulent operators, with the number of confirmed cases rising by 40% annually since 2021 — and Indian researchers are among the most frequently targeted victims worldwide. Whether you are finalising your PhD literature review, preparing your first manuscript for international submission, or trying to fulfil your university's publication requirements, falling into a hijacked journal trap can cost you months of work, thousands of rupees in fraudulent fees, and — worst of all — serious damage to your academic reputation. This guide will teach you exactly how to spot the warning signs of a hijacked journal, verify a publication's legitimacy step by step, and protect your research career with confidence in 2026.

What Is a Hijacked Journal? A Definition for International Students

A hijacked journal is a fraudulent website that impersonates a real, legitimate, and often SCOPUS-indexed academic journal by copying its exact title, ISSN number, editorial board, and visual branding — tricking researchers into submitting manuscripts and paying publication fees to criminals rather than the genuine publisher. Unlike a predatory journal, which is an entirely fabricated publication with no legitimate counterpart, a hijacked journal deliberately exploits the credibility of an established, peer-reviewed outlet. The real journal continues to operate normally while the fake clone silently collects your work and your money.

For international students and early-career researchers in India, the risk is especially acute. Pressure to publish in indexed journals for PhD requirements, promotions, and government-funded grants creates a sense of urgency that fraudsters exploit. They send unsolicited emails with familiar journal names, professional-looking invoice templates, and fabricated acceptance letters — all designed to make you act fast and not verify carefully.

Understanding this distinction is the critical first step. Once you know that a journal can be both real (in name) and fraudulent (in operation), you will naturally approach every submission target with a verification-first mindset. The sections below give you the exact tools to do that.

Hijacked vs. Legitimate vs. Predatory Journals: Side-by-Side Comparison

Before you can effectively spot a hijacked journal, you need to understand how it differs from both a legitimate publication and a predatory one. This comparison table is the clearest way to see the distinctions at a glance.

As you can see, hijacked journals occupy the most dangerous category precisely because they borrow all the visible markers of legitimacy. When you spot a journal that matches a known SCOPUS title but shows even two or three of the hijacked-column characteristics, treat it as an immediate red flag and investigate further before submitting your manuscript.

How to Spot a Hijacked Journal: 7-Step Verification Process

Following a structured verification checklist before every journal submission is the single most effective way to protect your research. Here is the exact 7-step process used by experienced academics and academic publishing consultants — including the team at Help In Writing's SCOPUS Journal Publication service — when evaluating a journal's legitimacy.

1. Step 1: Verify the ISSN on the Official ISSN Portal
   Go directly to portal.issn.org and enter the journal's claimed ISSN. Compare the registered title, publisher name, and official URL against what the journal's website claims. Any discrepancy — even a minor one — is grounds for serious concern. Hijacked journals almost always use the real ISSN, but the registered URL will point to the legitimate publisher, not the fraudulent clone.
2. Step 2: Cross-Check Against the SCOPUS Source List
   Visit the official Elsevier SCOPUS Source List at scopus.com/sources and search for the journal by title and ISSN. Verify that the journal is currently active (not discontinued or removed). Tip: Some journals were previously indexed and have since been de-listed — a fraudulent site may still claim SCOPUS indexing for a journal that was removed years ago. Always check the coverage dates.
3. Step 3: Inspect the Website URL Carefully
   Look at the website URL character by character. Hijacked journal websites frequently use tactics like replacing the original TLD (.org → .net, .com → .info), inserting hyphens between words, adding country codes, or using slight spelling variations. The legitimate publisher's URL will always be hosted under their verified domain (e.g., journals.elsevier.com, springer.com, wiley.com). If the site you are on does not match this, it is almost certainly fraudulent.
4. Step 4: Verify Editorial Board Members Independently
   Take three or four names from the listed editorial board and search for them on Google Scholar, ResearchGate, or their institutional profile pages. Email one or two directly and ask: "Are you currently a member of the editorial board of [Journal Name]?" Legitimate editors will confirm. Hijacked journals routinely list academics who have never consented to — and are often entirely unaware of — their association with the fraudulent outlet.
5. Step 5: Check the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
   The DOAJ — Directory of Open Access Journals maintains a vetted list of quality open-access publications. If the journal claims to be open-access but is not on the DOAJ, this is a warning sign. DOAJ also maintains a list of journals that were once listed and have since been removed for failing quality standards — checking this record is equally valuable.
6. Step 6: Validate the DOI at CrossRef
   Take any published article from the journal and check its DOI at doi.org. A valid DOI should resolve immediately to the article on the legitimate publisher's platform. If the DOI resolves to a different domain than the journal's claimed website, or returns an error, you are looking at a hijacked publication. Key insight: CrossRef registers all legitimate DOIs; fraudulent publications cannot register DOIs under a publisher they do not represent.
7. Step 7: Contact Your Institution's Research Librarian
   If you are still uncertain after completing the above six steps, contact your institution's research librarian. University librarians have access to professional verification databases and industry alerts that are not publicly available. They can confirm within hours whether a journal is legitimate or flagged as fraudulent. You can also contact Help In Writing's expert team for a free journal verification consultation before you submit your manuscript.

Key Warning Signs to Spot When Evaluating Academic Journals

Beyond the formal verification steps, there are practical warning signs you will encounter during your day-to-day research process. Learning to recognise these instinctively will help you spot a hijacked journal before you invest significant time in preparing a submission. A 2023 UGC academic integrity review found that 68% of retracted papers from Indian universities in the preceding five years had been submitted to either hijacked or predatory journals — making this knowledge genuinely career-critical for researchers in India.

Suspicious URL Patterns and Website Design

The single fastest way to spot a potentially hijacked journal is to look closely at the website URL before you do anything else. Legitimate academic journals are hosted on established publisher platforms — Elsevier uses elsevier.com and sciencedirect.com, Springer uses springer.com and link.springer.com, Wiley uses onlinelibrary.wiley.com. A journal that claims to be published by one of these major houses but has a URL like journal-name-online.net or journalname.publication-hub.com should raise an immediate red flag.

Website design quality alone is not a reliable indicator — some hijacked sites are professionally designed. However, pay attention to:

• Broken internal links or pages that cannot be loaded
• Missing or generic privacy policy and copyright pages
• Author guidelines that are vague, copied from another journal, or unusually brief
• No physical address, phone number, or verifiable institutional affiliation for the publisher

Fabricated or Stolen Editorial Boards

Hijacked journals invest significant effort in making their editorial boards look credible, because a list of well-known academics gives researchers false confidence in the publication's legitimacy. They typically scrape the real journal's editorial board page and reproduce it verbatim — or adapt it slightly to avoid detection. In some documented cases, academics have discovered their own names, photographs, and institutional affiliations listed on fraudulent journals without their knowledge.

When reviewing a journal's editorial board, always verify at least three to four names using independent sources. Check if the editors' institutional profiles reference their role at this specific journal. If an editorial board member is listed as "Prof. Dr. Rajesh Sharma, IIT Delhi" but searching his IIT Delhi faculty page shows no mention of this journal, investigate further before proceeding.

No Verifiable Peer Review Process

A legitimate academic journal has a documented, transparent, and time-consuming peer review process. Most reputable journals clearly describe their review timelines (typically four to twelve weeks for initial review), their double-blind or open review model, and the criteria for acceptance. If you submit to a journal and receive an acceptance notice within 24 to 72 hours with minimal or no reviewer feedback, you are almost certainly dealing with a fraudulent outlet — no genuine peer review of a research article can be conducted in that timeframe.

Additionally, check whether the journal is registered with COPE — the Committee on Publication Ethics. COPE membership is a recognised quality signal for legitimate publishers. Fraudulent journals rarely take steps to register with ethical oversight bodies.

Aggressive Solicitation and Escalating Fee Demands

Hijacked journals frequently use aggressive email solicitation — sending personalised-sounding invitations to submit based on your previously published work. These emails may reference your actual research area, previous papers, or even your institution — which can make them feel legitimate. Be suspicious of any unsolicited invitation to submit, regardless of how professional it appears.

Another hallmark of hijacked journals is the escalating fee structure. You may be quoted a nominal article processing charge (APC) at the time of submission, but after acceptance you will receive invoices for additional "handling fees," "fast-track processing," "certificate issuance," or "editorial services" that can quickly multiply the total cost. Legitimate journals publish their complete fee structure transparently on their website before you submit, with no hidden additions. If you need guidance on legitimate English editing certificates or manuscript formatting, always use verified providers.

5 Mistakes International Students Make with Journal Selection

Even researchers who are aware of hijacked journals can fall victim to them if they make any of these five common errors. Avoiding these mistakes will dramatically reduce your risk of publishing in a fraudulent outlet and protect both your research investment and your academic standing.

1. Trusting the journal's name without verifying its URL. A journal named "International Journal of Applied Sciences" may be a completely legitimate SCOPUS-indexed publication — or it may be a hijacked clone designed to look identical. 87% of researchers who submitted to hijacked journals in a 2024 COPE analysis reported they did not check the URL against the official publisher's domain before submitting. The name alone tells you nothing; the URL tells you everything.
2. Assuming indexing claims on the journal's website are accurate. Any fraudulent journal can write "Indexed in SCOPUS, Web of Science, and PubMed" on its homepage. This claim costs nothing to make and is impossible to verify from that same page. Always cross-check indexing claims using the official databases directly — SCOPUS Source List, Clarivate's Master Journal List, and PubMed's NLM Catalog — rather than trusting the journal's self-reported claims.
3. Not checking Beall's List or updated watchdog databases before submission. Jeffrey Beall's original list of predatory and hijacked journals is no longer maintained at its original location, but several successors and mirrors continue to update this resource. Checking your target journal against these databases takes under five minutes and can save you months of wasted effort. Also look for alerts on the Think. Check. Submit. initiative, which provides a researcher-friendly verification framework specifically designed to help you avoid fraudulent journals.
4. Ignoring unusually fast acceptance timelines. Genuine peer review takes weeks, not hours. If a journal accepts your paper within 48 hours of submission with a generic acceptance letter and no reviewer comments, this is an almost certain indicator of a fraudulent publication. Legitimate journals that offer expedited review still typically take at least one to two weeks, and they provide substantive reviewer feedback even for papers that are accepted without revision.
5. Paying publication fees before independently verifying legitimacy. Once you transfer money to a hijacked journal, recovery is virtually impossible. Never pay any APC, processing fee, or handling charge until you have completed the 7-step verification checklist above. If you feel pressure to pay quickly to secure a publication slot, treat that pressure itself as a warning sign. Legitimate journals do not use high-pressure sales tactics to collect fees. For safe manuscript preparation and submission guidance, consult the team at Help In Writing's SCOPUS publication service before committing to any payment.

What the Research Says About Hijacked Journals in 2026

The academic community has produced a growing body of evidence documenting the scale, sophistication, and impact of hijacked journals on research integrity worldwide. Understanding what authoritative bodies have found gives you the context to appreciate why this issue demands serious attention — not just from individual researchers, but from universities, funding bodies, and publishers alike.

Elsevier, one of the world's largest academic publishers, has published multiple internal security reports confirming that fraudulent actors have attempted to clone dozens of its flagship journals. Elsevier's research integrity team actively monitors for hijacked clones and issues takedown notices, but the speed with which fraudulent sites re-emerge means the threat is effectively continuous. The company recommends that researchers always navigate to journal submission portals through their official Elsevier journal finder rather than through links received in unsolicited emails.

COPE — the Committee on Publication Ethics issued updated guidelines in 2024 specifically addressing the hijacked journal phenomenon, noting that the practice has become significantly more sophisticated over the past decade. COPE's guidance emphasises that institutional responsibility — not just individual researcher vigilance — is critical: universities must educate researchers about verification protocols and maintain updated lists of approved journals for their institutional publication requirements.

Research published by Lund University's DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) team found a 47% rise in confirmed hijacked journal incidents between 2021 and 2024, with South Asia, including India, accounting for a disproportionate share of affected researchers. The DOAJ team attributes this partly to intense publication pressure in academic systems where journal articles directly influence career advancement, promotions, and PhD degree conferment — creating exactly the urgency that fraudsters exploit.

IEEE, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, has been particularly active in alerting its member community about hijacked clones of IEEE journals and conference proceedings. IEEE recommends using its official Publication Recommender tool when identifying target journals, and it maintains a public list of known fake IEEE publications that researchers should check before submission. Given that IEEE publications are among the most commonly required for PhD completion in engineering and technology fields in India, this resource is particularly valuable for researchers in those disciplines.

The broader academic integrity literature, including studies published via Oxford Academic, consistently finds that researchers who received explicit training on journal verification are six times less likely to submit to a fraudulent journal than those who relied only on informal guidance from peers. This underscores the value of structured guides — like this one — and expert consultation services that give you the tools to protect your work before you submit.

How Help In Writing Supports Safe and Verified Journal Publication

At Help In Writing, we understand that navigating the academic publishing landscape is genuinely difficult — especially for early-career researchers and PhD students who are submitting to international journals for the first time. Our team of 50+ PhD-qualified specialists, many with direct editorial and publication experience at SCOPUS-indexed journals, provides comprehensive support designed to help you publish in the right outlet for your research, without the risk of falling victim to hijacked or predatory publications.

Our flagship SCOPUS Journal Publication service begins with a thorough journal identification and verification process. We evaluate your research scope, match it against current SCOPUS-indexed journals in your field, and confirm the legitimacy of every recommended outlet before you invest time in manuscript preparation. Every journal we recommend is verified against the official SCOPUS Source List, the ISSN Portal, and the publisher's confirmed submission portal — so you can proceed with complete confidence.

Beyond journal selection, we also help you prepare your manuscript to meet the specific formatting, language, and structural requirements of your target journal. Our English Language Editing Certificate service ensures your paper meets the language quality standards required by international journals, providing you with a verifiable editing certificate that many journals require as part of the submission process.

For researchers concerned about the integrity of their existing work, our Plagiarism and AI Removal service helps ensure your manuscript meets the originality standards required by SCOPUS-indexed journals — with manual rewriting that reduces similarity scores below the 10% threshold required by most major publishers. And if you need help with the foundational research underpinning your manuscript, our PhD Thesis and Synopsis Writing service provides comprehensive research support from concept to completion.

Every service we provide is delivered by PhD-qualified specialists with field-specific expertise, and we offer a free 15-minute WhatsApp consultation so you can discuss your specific publication goals before committing to any service. Contact us today to get expert guidance on your journal selection and manuscript preparation strategy.

Frequently Asked Questions About Hijacked Journals

What is a hijacked journal and how is it different from a predatory journal?

A hijacked journal is a fraudulent clone of a real, legitimate academic journal — criminals copy the title, ISSN, and branding of a trusted publication to deceive researchers into submitting and paying fees. A predatory journal, by contrast, is an entirely new fake journal with no legitimate counterpart. Hijacked journals are particularly dangerous because they appear credible at first glance, often mimicking SCOPUS-indexed titles with near-identical websites and ISSN numbers. Always verify the URL independently through the publisher's official website, and cross-check on ISSN Portal and SCOPUS Author Search before you submit your manuscript or pay any fee.

How can I quickly spot if a journal's website is fake?

To quickly spot a fake journal website, check the URL carefully — hijacked journals frequently use domain variations like hyphens, extra words, or different country-code domains (e.g., .net instead of .org). Legitimate journals are hosted on their official publisher's domain. Additionally, try to contact listed editorial board members directly to confirm their association, as hijacked journals routinely steal names of real academics without consent. A legitimate journal will also have a verifiable CrossRef DOI registration for all its published articles — test any published article's DOI at doi.org to confirm it resolves to the correct publisher platform.

Can publishing in a hijacked journal damage my academic career?

Yes, publishing in a hijacked journal can cause serious, long-term damage to your academic career. Papers published in hijacked or fraudulent outlets are not indexed in legitimate databases like SCOPUS or Web of Science, meaning they carry no academic weight for promotions, PhD admissions, or grant applications. University review committees and funding bodies are increasingly conducting journal verification checks as part of standard evaluation processes. In some documented cases, researchers have faced disciplinary review or had their degree conferment delayed for unknowingly submitting to hijacked sources. It is always worth investing the time to verify a journal thoroughly before submission — the cost of verification is minutes; the cost of a mistake can be years.

Is it safe to get help with SCOPUS journal publication from Help In Writing?

Yes, it is completely safe to get expert guidance from Help In Writing for your SCOPUS journal publication needs. Our PhD-qualified specialists help you identify genuine, actively indexed journals matched to your research field, prepare your manuscript according to the target journal's author guidelines, and guide you through the submission process step by step. We do not recommend, submit to, or assist with predatory or hijacked journals under any circumstances. Our SCOPUS publication service is fully transparent, and we provide you with verification evidence for every journal we recommend, so you can publish with complete confidence and institutional approval.

How do I verify if a journal is genuinely indexed in SCOPUS?

To verify genuine SCOPUS indexing, use the official Elsevier SCOPUS Source List (available at scopus.com/sources) to search for the exact journal title and ISSN. Do not rely on the journal's own website claiming indexing — always cross-reference with the official Elsevier database. You should also check the journal's coverage dates, as some journals were previously indexed and later removed due to quality concerns. For Web of Science verification, use Clarivate's Master Journal List. If in doubt, consult a research librarian or contact Help In Writing for a free journal verification consultation via WhatsApp — our experts can confirm a journal's status within the same business day.

Key Takeaways: Protecting Your Research from Hijacked Journals in 2026

Understanding how to spot and avoid hijacked journals is not an optional skill for today's researchers — it is a fundamental requirement for protecting your academic investment, your institutional standing, and your long-term career trajectory. Here are the three most important things to remember from this guide:

• Always verify the URL, not just the name. Hijacked journals steal legitimate names and ISSNs — the URL is the fastest and most reliable indicator of authenticity. Navigate to journal submission portals through official publisher websites, never through email links.
• Use the 7-step verification process before every submission. Check the ISSN Portal, SCOPUS Source List, CrossRef DOI, editorial board independently, and DOAJ every time — not just for unfamiliar journals, but for any journal that reached you through an unsolicited invitation.
• Expert guidance eliminates the risk entirely. Working with a verified academic publication service means every journal you target has already been vetted by specialists who understand the publication landscape at an expert level.

Ready to publish in a verified, SCOPUS-indexed journal with confidence? Contact Help In Writing on WhatsApp right now for a free 15-minute consultation with one of our PhD-qualified journal publication specialists.