title: Fake Journals: Not Always Valid Ways to Distinguish Them.
abstract: In their recent paper, Esfe et al. (Sci Eng Ethics, doi: 10.1007/s11948-014-9595-z 2014) present some criteria for fake journals and propose some 'features' to recognize them. While I share most of the authors' concerns about this issue in general, some of the reported criteria are not fit to differentiate fake journals from genuine ones. Here are some examples derived from their list, which illustrate that such criteria are not necessarily specific to fake journals only, but they could also apply to well-established journals and, therefore, should not be considered as is.
authors.affiliation: Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM), Créteil, France. khaled.moustafa@inserm.fr.
authors.forename: Khaled
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Moustafa
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D010506:Periodicals as Topic; D011643:Publishing / Q000941:ethics*
keywords: Common science pitfall; Fair publication system; Fake journals; Open access; Publication frenzy; Publishing bias; Research misconduct