Research Integrity
How We Verify an Editorial Board Member
Fabricated editorial boards are the most common single defect in questionable publishing — and the easiest to check. Here is the verification method w...
Directive Publications · Author & Reviewer ResourcesOpen Access · Peer-Reviewed
Trusted Research · Since 2026
Directive Academy
Guides on peer review, research integrity & scholarly publishing — for authors, reviewers and editors
Research Integrity
No Ethics Committee at Your Hospital: What Can Still Be Published, and What Cannot
A prospective interventional study run without prior ethics approval cannot be rescued afterwards, at this or...
Directive Editorial Team · 10 min
Research Integrity
Clinical Trial Registration: Why Registering Late Gets Your Paper Rejected
Registering a trial after the first patient is enrolled is not a paperwork slip — under ICMJE policy it can ma...
Directive Editorial Team · 4 min
Research Integrity
Patient Consent for Case Reports and Clinical Photographs
Ethics approval is not consent, and an eye bar is not anonymity. A practical guide to obtaining, documenting a...
Directive Editorial Team · 6 min
“Legitimate journals are transparent about their fees, peer review and editorial board — verify all three before you submit.”
— Directive Publications Editorial Standards
More from the Academy
Browse all guides →
Research Integrity
"The First Reported Case": How to Search Properly, and What to Write If You Cannot Prove It
"We report the first case of X" is a claim about the world, and it is easy to disprove. Make a claim about your search instead: how to run it, documen...
Research Integrity
You Have Found a Problem in Someone Else's Published Paper: Who to Tell, in What Order
Almost nothing is written for the reader who has spotted something wrong in a published paper: the order of contact, the evidence to attach, and the l...
Research Integrity
Is It the Real Journal? Detecting a Hijacked or Cloned Journal Website
A clone is not a low-quality journal. It is a real journal's identity worn by someone else, which is why quality checklists pass it. Five ownership te...
Research Integrity
What That Indexing Badge Actually Means: A Decoder for the Logo Wall
A journal homepage shows nine logos. Some represent an admission decision you can verify in a public register, some were bought, some just mean a craw...
Research Integrity
Audit Us: Checks You Can Run on Directive Publications Yourself
We hand over the queries, name ourselves as the specimen, and pre-state every result — including every one that goes against us. Wrong on the day you...
Research Integrity
You Published in a Predatory Journal. What Can and Cannot Be Undone
Almost nothing is written for the author who has already paid and already published. What a withdrawal request can achieve, what it cannot, and what b...
Research Integrity
Answering a Predatory Journal Listing, Criterion by Criterion
A calm, line-by-line reply to the standard predatory-publisher criteria, including the four we do not meet: curated indexing, board verification, pres...
Research Integrity
A Publisher Self-Audit: What Was Wrong in Our 60 Guides
We checked sixty published guides against our own live policies and fixed what did not match, including a line that cast our own lawful invoicing as a...
Publishing your research?
Directive Publications is an open-access publisher — every article peer-reviewed, Crossref-registered, and free to read under CC BY 4.0.