Turns out some scumbags have figured out another way to scam over the Internet

Not shocking, I know, but pretty disheartening: apparently, there has been an explosion over the past few years of fake professional journals and conferences, often named something very close to actual peer-reviewed publications and serious gatherings.

Bad enough that these frauds try to charge researchers to publish; what's far worse is the pollution of the body of the real academic literature. And I don't even want to imagine what the climate change denialists, the IDiots, and the anti-vaxxers will attempt (are attempting?) to do with these things.

“Beall’s list” seems like a good start in combating the problem. I'd like to think that this list of about 300 could be expanded to include the estimated 4000 currently floating around out there, and kept up to date, by some sort of crowdsourcing. There's also the idea that a whitelist of reputable journals and conferences could be created and maintained. Meantime, double-check your citations.