Methodological considerations for identifying questionable publishing in a national context: The case of Swedish Higher Education Institutions

Nelhans, Gustaf; Bodin, Theo

doi:10.1162/qss_a_00033

Cited by 10 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…This confirms previous research. 18 So, then what can be learned from the case of Sweden? A number of ethical issues affecting nursing are noteworthy, since we have found quite a significant amount of papers published in predatory journals by senior academics.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These findings align with a previous general decline in questionable publishing in Sweden, as reported by Nelhans and Bodin. 18 During this time and in the previous few years, there have been a number of papers addressing predatory publishing in the academic press, seminars discussing it at medical faculties, the subject has been included in nurse education, and quite a few cases at HIEs have highlighted the importance of being resilient to the lure of predators. It is possible that these measures have had an effect reflected in our result.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…17 One study found that an average of 0.5%–0.9% of the total publications from Swedish HEIs were published in questionable journals during the years 2012–2017, with a disproportionate large number of papers in nursing journals. 18 …”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Predatory nursing journals: A case study of author prevalence and characteristics

2020

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Background: Predatory publishing poses a fundamental threat to the development of nursing knowledge. Previous research has suggested that authors of papers published in predatory journals are mainly inexperienced researchers from low- and middle-income countries. Less attention has been paid to contributors from high-income countries. Aim: To describe the prevalence and characteristics of Swedish authors publishing in predatory nursing journals. Design: Quantitative descriptive case study. Participants and research context: Descriptive statistics were used to analyse the academic positions and academic affiliations of the authors of 39 papers published in predatory nursing journals during 2018 and 2019. Predatory nursing journals with Swedish contributors were identified by searching public listings of papers and applying a set of criteria. Journal site archives were used to identify additional papers with Swedish authors. Ethical considerations: This study was conducted in accordance with national regulations and ethical principles of research. Results: Almost two-thirds of Swedish authors publishing in predatory nursing journals hold senior academic positions. A small group of higher education institutions account for a majority of academic affiliations. Findings suggest that higher education institutions and experienced nursing researchers from Sweden make substantial contributions to predatory nursing journals, but that predatory publication habits might be concentrated in a limited number of academics and research milieus. A year-to-year comparison indicates that the prevalence of publishing in predatory journals might be diminishing. Discussion: Swedish nurse researchers help legitimize predatory journals, thus jeopardizing the trustworthiness of academic nursing knowledge. Substandard papers in predatory journals may pass as legitimate and be used to further academic careers. Experienced researchers are misleading junior colleagues, as joint publications might become embarrassments and liabilities. Conclusion: While the academic nursing community needs to address the problem of predatory publishing, there is some hope that educational efforts might have an effect on combating predatory publishing in nursing.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Predatory nursing journals: A case study of author prevalence and characteristics

2020

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“…However, it is notable that when these criteria are used to establish blacklists or predatory ranking systems, errors may arise (Teixeira da Silva & Tsigaris, 2018 ; Strinzel et al, 2019 ; Teixeira da Silva and Tsigaris, 2020a ; Tsigaris & Teixeira da Silva, 2021 ). Funding agencies or policy advisory entities that do make use of black- or white lists therefore combine different sources to overcome each one’s shortcomings (Eykens et al, 2019 ; Nelhans & Bodin, 2020 ).…”

Section: What Criteria For Predatory Publishing Have Been Proposed To Date?mentioning

confidence: 99%

A credit-like rating system to determine the legitimacy of scientific journals and publishers

et al. 2021

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The predatory nature of a journal is in constant debate because it depends on multiple factors, which keep evolving. The classification of a journal as being predatory, or not, is no longer exclusively associated with its open access status, by inclusion or exclusion on perceived reputable academic indexes and/or on whitelists or blacklists. Inclusion in the latter may itself be determined by a host of criteria, may be riddled with type I errors (e.g., erroneous inclusion of a truly predatory journal in a whitelist) and/or type II errors (e.g., erroneous exclusion of a truly valid scholarly journal in a whitelist). While extreme cases of predatory publishing behavior may be clear cut, with true predatory journals displaying ample predatory properties, journals in non-binary grey zones of predatory criteria are difficult to classify. They may have some legitimate properties, but also some illegitimate ones. In such cases, it might be too extreme to refer to such entities as “predatory”. Simply referring to them as “potentially predatory” or “borderline predatory” also does little justice to discern a predatory entity from an unscholarly, low-quality, unprofessional, or exploitative one. Faced with the limitations caused by this gradient of predatory dimensionality, this paper introduces a novel credit-like rating system, based in part on well-known financial credit ratings companies used to assess investment risk and creditworthiness, to assess journal or publisher quality. Cognizant of the weaknesses and criticisms of these rating systems, we suggest their use as a new way to view the scholarly nature of a journal or publisher. When used as a tool to supplement, replace, or reinforce current sets of criteria used for whitelists and blacklists, this system may provide a fresh perspective to gain a better understanding of predatory publishing behavior. Our tool does not propose to offer a definitive solution to this problem.

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“…For many years journals which editorial practices were questioned were called "predatory" journals (Beall, 2012). However, following some recent studies (Eykens et al, 2019;Frandsen, 2019;Nelhans & Bodin, 2020), we will refer to such journals as questionable, in recognition of the fact that it is hard to adequately distinguish bad-faith outlets from low-quality ones.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Citation patterns between impact-factor and questionable journals

2021

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One of the most fundamental issues in academia today is understanding the differences between legitimate and questionable publishing. While decision-makers and managers consider journals indexed in popular citation indexes such as Web of Science or Scopus as legitimate, they use two lists of questionable journals (Beall’s and Cabell’s), one of which has not been updated for a few years, to identify the so-called predatory journals. The main aim of our study is to reveal the contribution of the journals accepted as legitimate by the authorities to the visibility of questionable journals. For this purpose, 65 questionable journals from social sciences and 2338 Web-of-Science-indexed journals that cited these questionable journals were examined in-depth in terms of index coverages, subject categories, impact factors and self-citation patterns. We have analysed 3234 unique cited papers from questionable journals and 5964 unique citing papers (6750 citations of cited papers) from Web of Science journals. We found that 13% of the questionable papers were cited by WoS journals and 37% of the citations were from impact-factor journals. The findings show that neither the impact factor of citing journals nor the size of cited journals is a good predictor of the number of citations to the questionable journals.

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Methodological considerations for identifying questionable publishing in a national context: The case of Swedish Higher Education Institutions

Cited by 10 publications

References 35 publications

Predatory nursing journals: A case study of author prevalence and characteristics

Predatory nursing journals: A case study of author prevalence and characteristics

A credit-like rating system to determine the legitimacy of scientific journals and publishers

Citation patterns between impact-factor and questionable journals

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