Arxivia · Academic Publishing Intelligence
Over the past two years, more than 13,000 researchers have lost their published papers — not in obvious predatory dumps, but in just four Scopus journals rated Q1 and Q2. The very journals the entire academic world looks up to: high quartile, years of history, real indexing. These are the ones researchers trust when deciding where to submit work for a defense, a grant, or an academic title.
The number is staggering: over 13,000 researchers worldwide. Years of research, thousands of dollars in grant and personal funds, career hopes — all of it gone.
Last week, our partners at Futurity Publishing published a piece on their five Scopus journals that are mass-accepting papers right now — and are already under review for exclusion. That is a look at the threat in the moment. We will examine four others — the ones that have already been down that road: journals that looked flawless, took the money and publications of thousands of authors, and then vanished from the database.
Arxivia is an AI company that builds verification tools for academic publishing. We kept seeing the same picture repeat again and again: an experienced researcher does everything right — checks Scopus, looks at the quartile, opens the journal's website — and still gets caught. Not because they are careless. But because the scheme is built so that it cannot be spotted by eye.
Classic verification methods have become retrospective — they show that a journal was safe yesterday. We needed a solution that shows whether a journal is safe today. Researchers can no longer rely on the static “Indexed in Scopus” label alone. What was needed was a proactive technological shield that analyzes a journal's behavior in real time.
In this article we will show the full picture — not an isolated case, but a system operating worldwide right now.
We will break down how the scheme actually works: why a journal with a spotless reputation turns into a money-extraction machine within months, what stages this collapse goes through, and why it is almost invisible from the outside. You will see the mechanism from the inside — from the first invitation that lands in an author's inbox to the moment the papers are already deleted from the database and the money is gone.
We will show four real Q1–Q2 journals that have already taken the money and publications of thousands of authors in 2025–2026 — each with concrete figures, dates, and amounts. Not abstract “bad journals,” but documented histories of collapse: what the journal was before, what it became after, and how many people lost out.
And most importantly — we will explain how to protect yourself. How to recognize a trap invitation before you even reply to it. How to check a journal in real time — not by yesterday's label, but by its behavior today. And how to do it in minutes, before submission, while the mistake can still be undone — not after the fact, when nothing can be done.
The Common Pattern: How a Journal Becomes a Trap
Who is really behind these journals
The most common mistake is to imagine a predatory journal as something built by fraudsters from the start. The reality is different and therefore more dangerous: behind most such journals stand people who already own a publication with years of reputation. They are not villains from birth — they are rational players who at some point decide to monetize the trust they have accumulated.
There are usually three reasons. Someone is wrapping up a career and wants to squeeze the maximum out of the journal one last time. Someone has become disillusioned with the system — played fair for years, got nothing back, and decided the rules are no longer their problem. And someone simply saw the demand — thousands of researchers desperately looking for somewhere to publish fast — and couldn't resist the temptation. All three share the same thing: access to tools for mass author outreach, and enormous demand pressing from the other side. When these two factors meet, an honest journal turns into a machine within months.
Three ways a journal becomes a trap
- An established journal that “turns.” A legitimate publication with years of Scopus history suddenly changes behavior — it starts publishing in enormous volumes, accepting everything, raising fees. The old reputation covers the transition. (This is what happened with IJIRSS and Retos.)
- A journal grown for fraud. The publication is built deliberately: for years it patiently publishes legitimate work to earn Scopus indexing — and then instantly exploits that status for profit. (The classic example is the Journal of Posthumanism.)
- A purchased journal. A new owner with predatory intent buys the publication and immediately switches it to volume mode. (This is exactly what happened to Lex Localis after the sale.)
How an author gets caught: five steps
- Mass invitation campaign. The journal starts sending researchers letters offering fast publication for a fee. The letter sounds appealing and urgent: instant acceptance, Scopus indexing, an affordable price. This is where it all begins — and this is where the trap can still be stopped.
- An offer too good to refuse, under a deadline. The author is under pressure — a Scopus publication is needed for a defense, a promotion, or a grant. The journal is fast, the price is manageable, the status says indexed. Saying no is hard.
- Submitted → accepted → paid. The manuscript is accepted within days. The paper is published. The author pays — usually $300–1,500. Sometimes the paper even makes it into Scopus. Everything looks fine.
- Scopus catches it — but invisibly to the author. An automated monitoring system (Source Quality Radar) flags anomalies and refers the journal to CSAB for review. The review lasts from 1 to 12 months — and the entire time the journal continues to display as indexed. Nowhere — not in the Scopus profile, not on the journal's website — does any “under review” mark appear. The author sees active indexing, the quartile in place — and submits, confident that all is well. They physically cannot find out that the journal is already under investigation.
- The paper disappears — retroactively, at the worst moment. When the review is complete and violations are confirmed, the consequences hit not only the journal but the authors too. In roughly 70% of predatory journals of this type, papers from the violation period are removed from the database retroactively — meaning work that was already indexed, already paid for, and already cited simply vanishes from Scopus.
The key here is that the moment it happens is beyond the author's control. Typical scenario: the paper is submitted, published, indexed. On that basis the researcher files documents for a grant, for an academic title, or goes to a defense — holding a valid Scopus publication. And in exactly that window the journal completes its review and the paper is removed. The defense, the grant, or the conferral falls through — not through any fault of the author, but because the indexing disappeared shortly before the decisive date, and there was no way to know in advance.
Not “the journal no longer accepts new papers,” but your specific, already-published paper losing its indexing forever. The money is not refunded. The paper does not count toward a defense or a grant. Resubmitting it to another journal is not possible either — it has already been published.
The window that works against the author
The whole scheme lives in the gap between the moment a journal starts going bad and the moment Scopus finishes its review — a window of up to 12 months. Inside it, the journal is still indexed, still carries its quartile, still accepts papers. Thousands of authors manage to submit, pay, and publish during exactly this period — when everything is still formally clean. And then, when the review concludes, most of them learn the worst: it is not only the journal that is lost, but the paper itself.
Four Q1–Q2 Journals That Vanished in 2025–2026
Each was indexed in Scopus at the moment of submission. Each looked safe. All shared one scenario — with different consequences for thousands of authors.
IJIRSS — Innovative Research and Scientific StudiesQ2 · Excluded 2025
Multidisciplinary · in Scopus since 2021
| Indicator | 2018–2024 · normal | Since Dec 2024 · cash-grab |
|---|---|---|
| Volume | 100–150 papers/year | Up to ~500 papers per issue, indiscriminate |
| Peer review | Full | 1 week |
| Fee | $1,500 | Cut to $1,200 to drive volume |
Hidden signal: at submission — still Q2 with valid indexing. The collapse only becomes visible once an issue accumulates 500+ papers. By then the author has already submitted, paid, and is waiting.
RetosQ1 · Not indexed 2026
Cultural Studies · in Scopus since 2016 · APC €330
| Indicator | 2016–2023 · normal | Since 2024 · cash-grab |
|---|---|---|
| Volume | 200–400 papers/year | 1000+ (2024) → 1500+ (2025) |
| Peer review | 2–4 months | 1 week |
| Scope | Multidisciplinary — cultural & education studies | Within scope, but accepted en masse without review |
Hidden signal: the journal kept to its indexed fields (cultural studies, education, some medical topics) — it did not drift outside its scope. What changed was volume: it began accepting a huge number of papers with almost no peer review, and the low €330 fee drew a mass influx. It passed a CSAB check once, which reassured authors.
Journal of PosthumanismQ1 · Excluded 2025
Cultural Studies · Transnational Press London · APC $1,200
| Indicator | “Looked” safe | 2025 · cash-grab |
|---|---|---|
| Quartile / profile | High Q1 from the start | Narrow journal rapidly elevated to Q1 |
| Issues per year | 3 | 3 → 12 |
| Scope | Narrow — posthumanism | Accepts everything |
Hidden signal: the myth that “Q1 journals aren't excluded” collapsed right here. Intermediaries advertised the journal as a fast way into Q1 — and even submitted there themselves. The publisher had already featured in scandals (International Journal of Religion).
Lex Localis — Journal of Local Self-GovernmentQ2 · Wiped 2026
Law · APC $1,100
| Indicator | 2009–2024 · normal | Since 2025 · sold, cash-grab |
|---|---|---|
| Owner | Institute for Local Self-Government, Maribor | UK Zhende Publishing Ltd |
| Volume | ~50 papers/year · 4 issues | 4 → 14 issues |
| Scope | Law only | “Multidisciplinary” — accepts everything |
Hidden signal: a change of ownership — and immediately mass invitations for fast publication. The profile still looked like a solid law Q2, until the yearly volume jumped from 4 issues to 14.
Why You Can't Catch It by Eye
Having read this far, you are probably thinking: “Okay, I'll just check the journal carefully before submitting.” Reasonable. The problem is that every check an author can do manually shows the journal as it was yesterday — not as it has become today.
Here is what a researcher typically does when choosing a journal — and why each step lets them down:
Checks whether it's indexed in Scopus. It is. We just covered why: during a CSAB review the journal stays in the database for months with no mark at all. A “yes” here guarantees nothing.
Checks the quartile. The quartile is in place — Q1 or Q2. But the quartile is calculated from citations of previous years. It reflects the reputation the journal earned before the breakdown, and physically cannot fall during the months the journal is already running as a machine. A high quartile today is a grade for the day before yesterday.
Opens the journal's website. The site is professional, the editorial board is in place, the ISSN is there. But the website is a storefront the owner controls completely. It looked exactly the same a year ago, when the journal was honest.
See the pattern? None of these signals is lying — they are simply outdated. They describe the journal in the past. What makes the journal dangerous now is hidden not in these static labels but in its behavior over the last few months: how many papers it suddenly began publishing, how sharply issues exploded in volume, how fast acceptance became, whether it started taking topics outside its profile, whether the publisher changed.
To see this, you would have to open the archive, count the papers in every issue over two years, compare them against the profile, check each topic for scope compliance — and do it before submission. Manually, that is hours of work. And the signal also appears with a delay — it only becomes visible once the collapse has already piled up.
And here lies an even deeper problem. Even if the author opens the archive and sees the numbers — they won't know what the numbers mean. Is a sudden jump in volume an anomaly, or normal for a large multidisciplinary journal? Is acceptance within a week alarming, or just an efficient editorial office? To answer, you need a basis for comparison: you need to have seen thousands of journals, to know what healthy dynamics look like and what the start of a collapse looks like. An experienced editor recognizes the pattern in seconds — because they've seen it dozens of times.
Now imagine an author publishing for the first time. Or working in a field where they are not an expert. Or pressed by defense deadlines. They have neither this basis for comparison, nor hours for manual analysis, nor the experience to tell the normal from the dangerous. They do what seems sensible — check Scopus, the quartile, the website — and get caught.
This is exactly why traditional blacklists are powerless: they record the journal only after the collapse. But the author needs the decision before.
Conclusion
Four journals, four different roads — but one scenario. All were Q1 or Q2. All had years of history and real indexing. All looked flawless right up to the moment when it was already too late. And together they took the publications, money, and career plans of more than 13,000 researchers.
The main lesson is not that these particular journals turned out to be dangerous. It is that none of the usual verification methods could have predicted it. Scopus showed “indexed.” The quartile showed Q1. The website looked solid. Every signal a researcher is used to relying on described the journal in the past — while the danger lived in its behavior over the last few months, invisible to the eye.
This is where the line runs between the old approach and the new one. Blacklists, blacklist databases, advice to “check the journal's reputation” — all of it works after the fact, recording a collapse that has already happened. But the author needs the decision before submission — while the paper has not yet been sent, the money not yet paid, and the mistake can still be undone.
Choosing a safe journal is no longer a matter of intuition, reputation, or luck. It is a matter of verification: whether the journal behaves today the same way it looks on paper. And for the first time this check can be done not in hours of manual work, and not with expertise most authors don't have — but in a few minutes, before you take a step that cannot be reversed.
Behind every publication stand years of work. The only thing that separates a safe choice from a loss is verification done in time: before submission, not after.