Unless otherwise indicated, this guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) licence.
This guide was co-developed by Ooi Lian Ping (NIE Library) and Xu Cong (SUTD Library) in 2021, with inputs from members of Singapore Alliance of University Libraries – Research Services Task Force (SAUL-RSTF).
Open Access publishing is increasingly gaining popularity as it speeds up the process of publication and facilitates dissemination to a wider audience by removing paywalls. This form of publishing usually operates on an author-pays business model, whereby the author pays a fee to have their research published online.
However, this transition to Open Access has also prompted an increase in predatory publishers who exploit the author-pays model for their own profit. Besides authors, these publishers also target editorial board members, conference presenters, and conference attendees.