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I regularly receive emails from Open Access predatory journals or conferences asking me to publish an article or attend some kind of conference somewhere. Usually, those emails are easy to identify.

Recently, I received an email from a Journal called Research Features, inviting me to publish an article in their journal which focuses more on outreach if I understand them correctly.

Does anybody have any experience with this (or a similar) journal, is this a serious thing?

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    A general rule of thumb based on my experience: if you are not sure if a journal/conference is predatory, then it is almost certainly predatory. – Bitwise Jul 24 '18 at 8:40
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    I ignore all unsolicited requests for contributions that are not (i) from people in my personal network or (ii) from very well known scientists in my field and personalized (a phone call makes the decision even easier). – Roland Jul 24 '18 at 9:27
  • Be super careful when tapping on these links. These could be phising links taking you to a phising site that looks legit. Your device could get compromised before you even know it. If you can, copy the link, log out of your email, open a new private window, paste the link and view them there. – honeymoly Sep 18 '20 at 20:16
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    Also, if you have spare time, you can do a quick malware check on the links online to see if the links are malicious or not. – honeymoly Sep 18 '20 at 20:23
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    Another rule of thumb: If they ask you without any prior contact, it is probably a scam. Usually you need to contact the journal and not vice versa. – allo Nov 18 '20 at 16:32
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Research Features is a UK-based magazine intended for a broad audience (outreach), it is not a peer-reviewed academic journal.

So in one sense it is legitimate: it's a real magazine with real contributors that some people genuinely read. You can contribute a piece if you so wish to.

I do not think it claims to be a journal.

"We are not a scholarly publisher. We sit somewhere in the middle and feel very comfortable in our unique space. We will never engage in ‘click-bait’ or ‘tabloid’ pop-science; but we do not offer complex peer-reviewed content. Our publication offers detailed insight using clear language and a visual format which translates complex science, whilst remaining respectful."

Source: https://researchfeatures.com/about/

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    The link is to Research Features and as far as I can tell there is no such journal as Research Futures. I think this is clearly just a typo in this answer. – Nate Eldredge Jun 26 '19 at 14:00
  • @scaaahu that must have been a typo (which I did not recognized), thank you Peter K. for correcting it – Alf Jun 30 '19 at 9:33
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I have some experience with writing to outreach magazines (which I would label this). It can be quite rewarding to present research to a broader audience, but also demanding. Two pieces of advise:

1) Ask if you will have an editorial assistant associated. They can do wonders for your writing, and offer good journalistic insight.

2) Require appropriate monetary compensation.

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    Research Outreach asks the writer for paiement, not the reverse! – Xi'an Feb 4 '19 at 21:02
  • I think there are two clearly distinct models - nabla is thinking of magazines where the author writes the article and gets paid, while Xi'an (and OP) talk about magazines where the author pays a science journalist to write the article about the scientists work. Both can in my opinion be valid, and appeal to different scientists. If you have the time and skills to write a great public piece about your work there is little reason to pay somebody else to do it, but this will simply not be true for most scientists. – xLeitix Feb 10 '20 at 10:41
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They share the same street address and web styling as another similar magazine, Research Outreach: https://researchoutreach.org/our-company/

Same people, same idea, similar content (though I have not checked for overlaps).

I might give this one a miss.

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  • They also charge you for the content you create and give them for free. – Gabriel 2 days ago
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It's predatory for me. You can browse their latest issues, for example this one, all are from Asian academics. I am Asian and the article they mentioned and invited me for was published years ago and they said

we understand your work is still going..

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Looks like one has to pay; at least invitiation mail says "the cost for taking part" so: rather scammy

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