By the FRELIP Editorial Team
“Predatory” journals charge authors to publish while skipping the peer review and editorial standards that give scholarship its credibility. For early-career African researchers under pressure to publish, the lure of fast acceptance can be costly — to careers and to the public record. This briefing will explain how to tell a legitimate open access journal from a predatory one, why blanket “blacklists” are an imperfect tool, and how curated whitelists such as the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) apply transparent vetting criteria around peer review, editorial process, and licensing. We will translate DOAJ’s standards into a practical checklist a researcher can run through before submitting, and point to FRELIP guides that reinforce these evaluation skills.