Junk journals: Scientometrics vs Science

Abstract

The social organization of the Russian scientific community is such that many established ethical standards conflict with the real research practice. Using exclusively scientometric approaches to assessing scientific achievements leads to the fact that the quantitative indicators of this assessment prevail over the true results of research activity. The paper aims to reveal organizational problems associated with the interaction with junk journals that result in ‘clogging’ and ‘emptying’ objective scientific knowledge about the modern world. The theoretical basis of the study includes scientometric approaches to evaluating publication activity. Statistical methods were used to analyse the development and spread of unscrupulous journals and junk scientific conferences; the methods of expert assessments and content analysis were also applied. The information base is the corpus of leading Russian and foreign researchers’ works on scientometric evaluation of publications and the use of special methods of bibliometric analysis. The multiplicity of fraud issues in science still unresolved and the palliative measures taken make it possible to assess the harmfulness of scientometric formalism from a new perspective. The main features of junk journals are identified: lack of peer review, international collaboration and target audience; multidisciplinarity; demand-based journal volumes; a short publication cycle, etc. In the article, we assess the dynamics and spread of such journals in Russian science, identify effective measures to counteract law-quality publications, such as retraction and a combination of altmetric and bibliometric methods for evaluating studies. Another focus of analysis is to describe the practice of junk conferences and provide criteria for their identification.