Q: Is [HSOA Journal of] Physical Medicine, Rehabilitation & Disabilities a predatory journal?
I was invited to submit a paper by an international journal named [HSOA Journal of] Physical Medicine, Rehabilitation & Disabilities. Is this a predatory journal?
Yes, it does seem to be so. Firstly, no international / quality journal approaches a researcher directly for a paper. (Of course, a journal may approach an author to commission a piece, but then, they don’t simply ask them to submit a paper. Rather, they first discuss ideas and possibilities for a piece, often involving some amount of collaboration and brainstorming.) Anyway, other indicators of this being a bogus journal are the unrefined look and feel of the site, unintuitive functionality of the social media icons at the bottom of the page (which take you to the icons at the top of the page on clicking), lack of links for the industry sites and databases whose images appear on the site, and a possibly fake address. So, if you were considering submitting, we would suggest not to. :)
For various ways to identify predatory journals/publishers, you may refer to these resources: