Andrés Fernández-Ramos‡, Rubén Comas-Forgas§, Blanca Rodríguez-Bravo‡Corresponding author: Andrés Fernández-Ramos ( afernr@unileon.es ) Academic editor: Joan Marsh © Andrés Fernández-Ramos, Rubén Comas-Forgas, Blanca Rodríguez-Bravo. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Citation:
Fernández-Ramos A, Comas-Forgas R, Rodríguez-Bravo B (2026) Identifying academic spam and recommendations for dealing with it: a literature review. European Science Editing 52: e174423. https://doi.org/10.3897/ese.2026.e174423 |  |
Objectives: To review the literature on spam emails that scholars receive; to identify the characteristics of such emails; to categorize their recurring features; to review the main recommendations for dealing with academic spam; to help consolidate the findings into a practical framework for researchers, mentors, and research offices; and to serve as a basis for developing a checklist for detecting academic spam.
Methods: Two databases, namely Scopus and Web of Science, were searched in December 2024 for empirical studies, each analysing at least 50 unsolicited emails received by researchers and presumably sent by potentially predatory journals, pub-lishers, or conferences. The search yielded a total of 29 such studies, which were then analysed to identify and categorize two types of information: the items used for identifying or characterizing academic spam and the recommendations for dealing with it.
Results: A total of 33 items were related to the email itself, and 20 more referred to information about the journal, publisher, or conference – information that could be obtained only after consulting external sources to identify the sender. The first group of 33 items was divided into eight categories, such as ‘solicitation tactics and persua-sion’, ‘editorial and peer-review claims’, or ‘misleading metrics and indexing claims’. The recommendations were diverse, but most addressed measures for (1) training in detecting predatory journals and academic spam, (2) raising awareness of the prob-lem among researchers, and (3) developing and using tools to identify both academic spam and predatory journals and publishers.
Conclusion: Academic spam remains a threat to efficient and trustworthy scholarly communication. This review systematizes the most frequently reported indicators and countermeasures proposed across studies and provides an operational basis for awareness-raising, filtering practices, and institutional guidance.