Respected radiology journal warns of predatory 'imitators' claiming to be the publication
A respected radiology journal is warning its readers about “predatory” submission sites posing as the publication.
Last week, the Journal of Nuclear Medicine issued an alert regarding external sites imitating JNM to solicit authors, editors and reviewers. JNM says that the sites have even gone as far as issuing fabricated acceptance letters with images plucked from the publication’s official website.
“JNM has only one submission site and has no affiliation with any third-party submission service. Official communications regarding submissions will originate from the submission system or journal staff with snmmi.org email addresses,” the alert advises. “Services that claim to be acting on behalf of JNM are not legitimate.”
JNM went on to caution authors seeking to submit their work to be weary of third-party sites that offer submission assistance services. The publication encouraged authors to thoroughly vet said sites and verify their integrity, history, practices and reputation prior to submitting their work.
The publication also reiterated the following:
JNM only accepts work submitted directly through this link: https://submit-jnm.snmjournals.org.
Only emails that come from snmmi.org are considered official.
JNM will never charge a fee for any service related to publication prior to its acceptance.
Acceptance for review is not the same as an acceptance for a publication.
Predatory journals have become a growing problem, with the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICJME) estimating that there were over 15,000 in 2021. In early 2025, ICJME published an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine to help guide authors in how to avoid such publications.
"The practices that these entities employ include aggressive solicitation of manuscript submissions, the promise of extremely rapid turnaround times, and a lack of transparency about article submission, processing and even withdrawal charges,” the authors of the editorial wrote. “Predatory journals may claim that they follow legitimate editorial and publishing practices but do not actually conduct peer review or such functions as archiving journal content, managing potential conflicts of interest, enabling corrections and responding to author queries in a timely manner. In egregious cases, the ‘published’ articles never appear, despite authors’ having paid the requested fees.”
The authors also referenced ThinkCheckSubmit.org and the World Association of Medical Editors as resources that can help determine the trustworthiness of publications.
The following two resources offer more information on specific journals considered to be predatory:
In addition to her background in journalism, Hannah also has patient-facing experience in clinical settings, having spent more than 12 years working as a registered rad tech. She began covering the medical imaging industry for Innovate Healthcare in 2021.