How to Recognize and Avoid Potential, Possible, or Probable Predatory Open-Access Publishers, Standalone, and Hijacked Journals

Abstract

Introduction and aim:The Internet has enabled an easy method to search through the vast majority of publications and has improved the impact of scholarly journals. However, it can also pose threats to the quality of published articles. New publishers and journals have emerged so-called open-access potential, possible, or probable predatory publishers and journals, and so-called hijacked journals. It was our aim to increase the awareness and warn scholars, especially young researchers, how to recognize these journals and how to avoid submission of their papers to these journals. Methods: Review and critical analysis of the relevant published literature, Internet sources and personal experience, thoughts, and observations of the authors. Results: The web blog of Jeffrey Beall, University of Colorado, was greatly consulted. Jeffrey Beall is a Denver academic librarian who regularly maintains two lists: the first one, of potential, possible, or probable predatory publishers and the second one, of potential, possible, or probable predatory standalone journals. Aspects related to this topic presented by other authors have been discussed as well. Conclusion: Academics should bear in mind how to differentiate between trustworthy and reliable journals and predatory ones, considering: publication ethics, peer-review process, international academic standards, indexing and abstracting, preservation in digital repositories, metrics, sustainability, etc.

Publication ethics: science versus commerce

“…Websites are created with the same name as respectable journals. The hijackers than approach target groups with spam email (Dadkhah et al , 2017Beall 2016;Danevska et al 2016;Shen and Björk 2015). As Eriksson and Helgesson explain, the business model of these hijacked journals is the same as for predatory journals.…”

“…Other authors take another approach. Instead of producing lists of journals, they argue that in these times of publication pressure scientists should know how to identify reliable journals and distinguish them from less reliable ones and even pseudojournals (Danevska et al 2016;Shamseer et al 2017).…”

“…They refer to the phenomenon of "predatory journals." This is one of the hot topics of the moment in science and publishing (Beall 2017(Beall , 2016Shamseer et al 2017;Singer 2017;Carroll 2016;Danevska et al 2016;Gasparyan et al 2016;Dadkhah and Bianciardi 2016;Shen and Björk 2015). Editors and commentators have called this recent phenomenon "an emerging threat to the medical literature" (Harvey and Weinstein 2017), "the worst thing in publishing, ever" (Cook 2017), "another nail in the coffin of academics" (Kumar and Saxena 2016), or simply "academic nightmares" (Van Nuland and Rogers 2016).…”

“…The listing of editorial boards is incomplete. The major focus is on quick publication without serious review after payment of a fee (Van Nuland and Rogers 2016; Danevska et al 2016;Gasparyan et al 2016). The business model is "pay and publish".…”

Analýza predátorských znaků publikací jako služba Knihovny univerzitního kampusu

“…V celkových počtech časopisů indexovaných ve jmenovaných databázích se sice jedná o zanedbatelná čísla, ale přesto uvedená zjištění dokládají, že uvedené databáze nelze chápat jako zcela bezchybné whitelisty odborných periodik. Ačkoliv podle Macháčka a Srholce (Macháček & Srholec, 2017) v České republice nehrozí rapidní nárůst publikací českých autorů v predátorských časopisech, potenciální autoři jsou opakovaně vyzýváni ke kritickému posuzování časopisů kvůli odhalení případného predátorského titulu (Danevska, Spiroski, Donev, Pop-Jordanova, & Polenakovic, 2016;Harvey & Weinstein, 2017). Publikováním v predátorském titulu by totiž nejenže snížili vlastní prestiž ve vědecké komunitě (Nelson & Huffman, 2015), ale konkrétně v českém prostředí by mohli poškodit i vlastní instituci získáním záporných bodů při hodnocení výsledků Radou pro výzkum, vývoj a inovace (Komise pro hodnocení výsledků výzkumných organizací a ukončených programů, 2016a, 2016b, 2016c).…”