The following are some quick and easy tools to help you determine whether a publisher is legitimate.
Predatory publishing is an exploitative academic publishing business model that involves charging publication fees to authors without providing the editorial and publishing services associated with legitimate journals.
Aggressive marketing to unsuspecting authors, fictional editorial boards, little or no peer review, unqualified reviewers, and generally poor editorial quality are issues that plague the journal publishing landscape. Regardless of whether a journal asks for an APC or is subscription based, authors can critically evaluate journals before submitting their manuscripts. Use the authors checklist for evaluating journals or Contact a Subject Librarian for assistance.
These sites provide some more in depth guidance for evaluating OA journals and may help authors avoid paying APCs to low-quality or even predatory publishers.