Table of Contents
- Introduction
- The Exponential Rise and The Current Baseline
- The Fuel Driving the Predatory Engine
- 2026: The Forecast for Continued Proliferation
- The Countermeasures: A Fight for Integrity
- Conclusion
Introduction
Welcome to the academic jungle. For years now, a particular species of profiteer has been multiplying rapidly, masquerading as legitimate scholarly communication: the predatory journals. These entities, driven by profit rather than scholarship, exploit the open access publishing model and the academic pressure to “publish or perish.” They promise rapid publication, often for a fee (the Article Processing Charge, or APC), while offering little to no genuine peer review or editorial oversight. In essence, they are paper mills dressed in scholarly attire, posing a significant threat to the integrity of the global research record.
Identifying the number of predatory journals in 2026 is more complex than a simple numerical prediction. It requires looking at the current growth trajectory, the incentives driving both the publishers and the unwitting (or sometimes witting) authors, and the effectiveness of the countermeasures being implemented by the legitimate publishing world, research institutions, and indexers. While we can’t look into a crystal ball and give you an exact figure like 25,317, we can analyze the dynamics that suggest their numbers will almost certainly continue to swell, even if the rate of growth begins to slow in certain sectors. The reality is that the ecosystem that allows them to thrive is deeply ingrained in modern academic metrics.
The Exponential Rise and The Current Baseline
To understand 2026, we first need to appreciate the massive scale of the problem today. The proliferation of predatory journals is not a slow creep; it was an exponential explosion following the rise of open access publishing in the early 2010s. This surge was initially cataloged extensively by librarian Jeffrey Beall, whose now-defunct “Beall’s List” became the de facto (though controversial) register of these entities. While Beall’s list is no longer maintained, its spirit lives on in other databases and reports.
Current estimates, although widely variable due to the difficulty in defining and tracking these shadowy operations, are staggering. Almost a decade ago, an analysis suggested there were approximately 8,000 predatory journals. More recently, subscription-based services like Cabell’s Predatory Reports database have indicated that the number of titles has climbed to well over 18,000. Consider that for a moment: 18,000 journals that operate primarily to take money for a publication certificate, not to genuinely advance science. This number is a significant portion of the total scholarly journal universe, which itself consists of tens of thousands of titles.
This massive growth is not only about the sheer number of titles but also the volume of compromised research they contain. By 2020, it was estimated that predatory journals were publishing over half a million articles annually. Even if the number of new predatory publishers is beginning to plateau or even decline due to increased scrutiny and awareness, a major trend is the development of “mega-predatory publishers” that launch numerous journal titles under a single, more organized umbrella. This shift means that while the number of publishers might be consolidated, the number of journal titles available for exploitation continues to climb.
The Fuel Driving the Predatory Engine
Why do these journals keep popping up like digital weeds? The answer lies in the incentives and pressures within the global academic system. It’s a textbook example of a market failure where supply has been created to meet an artificial demand.
The Publish or Perish Mandate
The foundational driver is the persistent and often ruthless “publish or perish” culture. For most researchers, particularly early-career academics and those in low- and middle-income countries, career progression, funding applications, and institutional prestige are directly tied to the quantity of their publications. When faced with the lengthy, rigorous, and often high-rejection-rate process of a reputable journal, the quick-and-easy route offered by a predatory journal becomes a dangerously attractive shortcut. It’s an issue of poorly governed academic incentives, where any publication, regardless of its quality or vetting, often counts the same on a CV for tenure or promotion.
Exploiting the Open Access Model
The open access movement, which aimed to make research freely available to all, inadvertently created the perfect business model for predators. In the Gold Open Access model, the cost of publishing shifts from readers (via subscriptions) to authors (via APCs, sometimes expensively). Legitimate open access journals use this fee to cover professional services like thorough peer review, editing, typesetting, and hosting. Predatory journals, however, skip most of these costly steps—especially the rigorous peer review—pocketing the APC as pure profit. Since setting up a website and sending mass spam emails is cheap, their profit margins are immense. The sheer volume of articles they process, often publishing an absurd number of papers per issue, makes them highly lucrative operations.
Geographical and Demographic Factors
Studies have consistently shown that a disproportionate number of authors publishing in predatory journals hail from countries in Asia and Africa, making up as much as 75%. This isn’t because researchers in these areas are inherently less ethical; rather, it often reflects a combination of factors: intense institutional pressure to publish in foreign, English-language journals, limited funding for high-cost legitimate APCs, and a lack of experience or institutional guidance in discerning reputable from deceptive journals. The deceptive journals target these individuals aggressively through personalized, flattering email solicitations, creating a highly effective scam.
2026: The Forecast for Continued Proliferation
Looking ahead to 2026, the overall number of predatory journals is highly likely to continue its upward trend. Here’s why the phenomenon will persist and potentially mutate:
Digital Mimicry and Sophistication
Predatory publishers are getting smarter, evolving beyond the poorly designed, typo-ridden websites of their early days. In 2026, we’ll see even more sophisticated operations engaging in journal hijacking by creating mirror sites that perfectly mimic the branding, design, and even ISSNs of prestigious, legitimate journals. They are also becoming adept at gaming indexing systems, sometimes getting temporarily listed in less rigorous, though official-sounding, databases to lend an air of false legitimacy. The increasing sophistication makes them harder for the average, time-pressed researcher to spot.
The Rise of Predatory Conferences and Books
The predation is not limited to journals. The same business model is being applied to other academic outputs. We are already seeing a rise in predatory conferences, which charge high registration fees for low-quality, poorly organized events that offer minimal scientific value and often promise quick publication in non-existent or compromised proceedings. Similarly, predatory book publishers lure authors, particularly those in the humanities and social sciences, into paying large publication fees for books that receive no genuine editing, marketing, or distribution. The broader scope of these practices means the “predatory ecosystem” is expanding its footprint across all facets of scholarly communication, making it a more entrenched and diversified problem by 2026.
The Role of AI in Scaling Deception
The proliferation of advanced AI writing tools presents a terrifying prospect for 2026. AI can now generate highly plausible, if scientifically weak, academic articles at an astonishing speed. Predatory publishers, who already lack quality control, could leverage this technology to fill their journals with AI-generated content rapidly. This dramatically lowers their production costs—they don’t even need to wait for a human author’s submission—allowing them to launch new titles faster, publish more frequently, and increase their overall profits with minimal human effort. This potential for AI-powered content flooding is one of the most critical factors that could accelerate the growth in the number of predatory titles and articles between now and 2026.
The Countermeasures: A Fight for Integrity
While the forecast for growth seems grim, it’s not a one-sided battle. The academic community, legitimate publishers, and technological service providers are fighting back, and their actions might temper the rate of increase by 2026.
The White List/Black List Continuum
The strategy of simply maintaining “black lists,” such as the original Beall’s List, has proven insufficient and is often legally challenging. The focus has now shifted to promoting “white lists,” which are curated directories of verified, quality journals that adhere to ethical publishing standards. The most prominent example is the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), which vets journals based on stringent criteria, including a clearly defined peer-review process and transparent APC policies. Furthermore, institutions, like India’s University Grants Commission (UGC), have created their own approved lists to filter out predatory publications, a trend that is likely to be adopted more widely by 2026.
Educational and Vetting Tools
Awareness is the best defense. Institutions worldwide are increasing their efforts to educate researchers, especially early-career ones, about the hallmarks of a predatory journal. Librarians, in particular, have become the frontline defense, training researchers to use vetting checklists like “Think. Check. Submit.” This checklist encourages authors to look at a journal’s reputation, its indexing status, and the clarity of its peer-review and APC policies before submission. Widespread adoption of these simple, yet effective, tools will make it harder for the more rudimentary predatory journals to succeed by 2026.
Increased Scrutiny by Indexing Bodies
Major abstracting and indexing services, such as Scopus and Clarivate’s Web of Science, have been forced to become far more rigorous in their journal selection and deselection processes. Mass retractions and the delisting of thousands of articles from questionable journals have been necessary in recent years. This heightened scrutiny acts as a significant deterrent. Since inclusion in a prestigious index is a key marker of legitimacy—and a major marketing tool for predators—the faster and more accurately these services can identify and de-list compromised journals, the less attractive those journals become to savvy authors. By 2026, we expect even more sophisticated, AI-driven monitoring systems from these indexing bodies to combat the problem at scale.
Conclusion
Predicting the exact number of predatory journals in 2026 is an exercise in high-stakes forecasting, but the clear trend is not one of decline. Given the unstoppable pressure to publish, the high profitability of the “pay-to-publish” scam, the increasing sophistication of the deceptive practices (including AI-driven content generation), and the expansion into predatory conferences and books, the sheer count of these dubious titles is projected to continue its climb.
While the concerted efforts of white lists, educational initiatives, and rigorous indexing will undoubtedly help slow the rate of growth and make the market more difficult for small-time operators, the rise of the mega-predator publisher and new technological tools for deception suggest the problem will be even larger. It would not be surprising to see the total number of predatory journal titles exceed 20,000 by 2026, cementing this issue as one of the most pressing integrity crises facing global academic publishing in the mid-2020s. The fight will shift from simply spotting bad journals to defending the very concept of verifiable, peer-reviewed knowledge.