Sham journals that mimic real ones can fool unsuspecting authors who are submitting a manuscript, researchers looking for references for papers — and even indexing services aiming to be comprehensive in their coverage. For three years, researcher and sleuth Anna Abalkina has been tracking these clones in the Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker.
Earlier this month, Anna’s list of hijacked journals surpassed 400 entries. We took the opportunity to ask her about the list’s history, what happens to journals on the list, how to spot a potentially hijacked journal, and more.
You can find the spreadsheet of journals here. If you find a hijacked journal or one you suspect is hijacked, submit it here.
And you can help us continue this important work with a donation. Donate to the Hijacked Journal Checker here.
Retraction Watch: Congratulations on 400 entries on the Hijacked Journal Checker! How long have you been collecting this list?
Anna Abalkina: Thank you! When we started the list in May 2022, it had a bit more than 100 entries. Today, the number has surpassed 400, so there are 70-80 new hijacked journals annually. I’m very grateful to scholars and my colleagues who inform Retraction Watch and me about new hijacked journals.
I detected my first hijacked journal in 2020 because the journal Talent Development and Excellence — which I later found was a hijacked version — had published some plagiarized papers, and unauthorized content was indexed in Scopus. Then I identified a big network of hijacked journals. I also found that there were no active resources listing hijacked journals. Jeffrey Beall, who maintained a list of potential predatory and hijacked journals, had closed them. So I had the idea to create this regularly updated resource, which is freeware for scholars, in collaboration with Retraction Watch.
RW: Are any cases particularly memorable?
Abalkina: I remember one of my first detected hijacked journals, Novyi Mir (New World). It is a legendary Soviet, and now Russian, literary journal, a national heritage. For example, in 1962, during the Soviet period, it published One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Nobel Laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, about a Gulag prisoner, when the whole problem of the Gulag and political repressions had been silenced in the country. It was painful to see how the journal was hijacked and its title was used in a scam.
RW: Are the outfits hijacking journals typically duplicating a single journal or several?
There are several large networks of hijacked journals. They create dozens of clone websites of original journals. This is helpful for detection because they exhibit similar patterns. However, we still do not know much about these networks, and understanding how hijacked journals are organized is one of my future research goals.
RW: Are you able to trace hijacked journals back to who’s behind them?
Abalkina: I found one company that is behind journal transfers and journal hijacking. It is in my plans for 2026 to write more about it. But, unfortunately, many hijacked journals are registered anonymously and it is difficult to understand who is behind them.
RW: Have any journals been hijacked more than once?
Abalkina: There are increasing numbers of cases in which a journal has been hijacked several times by different networks of hijacked journals. This happens because fraudulent publishers target the same types of journals: those indexed in Scopus or Web of Science, local-language journals, and niche journals. The documented record is five clone websites of the Seybold Journal.
RW: Do journals get removed from the list?
Abalkina: The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker contains all websites, including expired ones. Evidence shows the strategy of some hijacked journals is cherry-picking. They create a clone website, it works for a certain period of time, and when the fraud is detected, the URL is abandoned and then expires. Keeping it on the list maintains a record that something went wrong and that there was a problematic journal with this title. That can help explain bad citations, for example, later on.
There are rare cases in which the web domain was cleared (or the content was cleared because of a court decision or legal enforcement).
RW: Is there any sort of enforcement after a journal is added to the list?
Abalkina: There is enforcement when a journal belonging to a major publisher is hijacked. Publishers have large legal teams. I see, for example, that Springer is quite effective in closing the web domains of hijacked journals. Ironically the Journal of Academic Ethics was hijacked in 2024, and the legal team turned it down rather fast.
Lately, I see an increasing number of journals belonging to Elsevier being hijacked. Journal of Informetrics, one of the leading journals in scientometrics, was hijacked recently. I have informed the publisher, but the website is still operating. That can also mean the hijacked journal is anonymous, and such enforcement is difficult when registrars don’t act without a court decision.
RW: Hijacking a journal seems like a convoluted way to make money. Is this a profitable scam?
Abalkina: I believe it is a very profitable scam. Creating a hijacked journal doesn’t require much money. They attract clients by sending marketing emails or cooperating with paper mills, which have their own local database of clients.
I estimate some hijacked journals that have content indexed in Scopus could earn more than $1 million within several months.
RW: Do hijacked journals pose a real threat to the scientific literature?
Abalkina: Definitely, hijacked journals are a cybercrime and a scam. They are not as numerous as predatory journals, but we see the consequences of hijacked journals in science.
First of all, there is evidence that papers in hijacked journals are associated with misconduct. One study showed that 66 percent of the analyzed sample of papers in hijacked journals contained plagiarism, and 28 percent displayed text similarities of 25 percent or more.
Papers published in hijacked journals are indexed in different databases, for example in Google Scholar. They were also successful in penetrating Scopus. Another study found that 67 hijacked journals compromised the data of authentic (original) journals in Scopus. Such indexjacking is harmful.
Papers from hijacked journals have also been added to the WHO database on COVID-19, and they are actively cited in publications that legitimize bad research.
RW: What should people do if they see a journal they think might be hijacked?
Abalkina: First of all, you can verify whether a journal is really hijacked. Look at WHOIS to see when the website was registered and whether the registrar is anonymous.
Check the DOIs. Sometimes hijacked journals use fake DOIs starting with 16 or 20. Real DOIs always start with 10. Check whether the titles of the papers correspond to the title of the journal, or whether you see anything suspicious. In many hijacked journals, the topic of the papers doesn’t correspond to the title of the journal. Then, check whether the journal and the exact URL are present in the Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker. If not, use the form to notify us about a possible hijacked journal. We will review the case, and if it is confirmed, we will update the Checker.
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