Predatory journals: no definition, no defence

Abstract

promise was doubtful and its validity unlikely to have been vetted. Predatory journals are a global threat. They accept articles for publication-along with authors' fees-without performing promised quality checks for issues such as plagiarism or ethical approval. Naive readers are not the only victims. Many researchers have been duped into submitting to predatory journals, in which their work can be overlooked. One study that focused on 46,000 researchers based in Italy found that about 5% of them published in such outlets 1. A separate analysis suggests predatory publishers collect millions of dollars in publication fees that are ultimately paid out by funders such as the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) 2. One barrier to combating predatory publishing is, in our view, the lack of an agreed definition. By analogy, consider the historical criteria for deciding whether an abnormal bulge in the aorta, the largest artery in the body, could be deemed an aneurysm-a dangerous W hen 'Jane' turned to alternative medicine, she had already exhausted radiotherapy, chemotherapy and other standard treatments for breast cancer. Her alternative-medicine practitioner shared an article about a therapy involving vitamin infusions. To her and her practitioner, it seemed to be authentic grounds for hope. But when Jane showed the article to her son-in-law (one of the authors of this Comment), he realized it came from a predatory journal-meaning its Leading scholars and publishers from ten countries have agreed a definition of predatory publishing that can protect scholarship. It took 12 hours of discussion, 18 questions and 3 rounds to reach.

Inflated citations and metrics of journals discontinued from Scopus for publication concerns: the GhoS(t)copus Project

“…Exploitation of the openaccess publishing model has been shown to go hand in hand with deviation from best editorial and publication practices for self-interest. [9] Such journals are not only associated with poor editorial quality that may affect the robustness and reliability of study findings, but are also deceptive and misleading by nature, i.e. they prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholars, and lack transparent and independent peer review.…”

“…they prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholars, and lack transparent and independent peer review. [9,24] Young researchers from low-income and middle-income countries are probably most susceptible to the false promises and detrimental practices of predatory journals. However, "predatory scholars" also seem to exist.…”

“…[6,7,8] Predatory journals are editorial outlets that "prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship and are characterized by false or misleading information, deviation from best editorial and publication practices, a lack of transparency, and/or the use of aggressive and indiscriminate solicitation practices". [9] Since researchers are pressured to publish in indexed journals, predatory journals are constantly trying, and succeeding at times, to be indexed in the Scopus database, thereby boosting their attractiveness to researchers. [2,7,8] Having articles from predatory journals indexed in Scopus poses a threat to the credibility of science and might be causing harm particularly in fields where practitioners rely on empirical evidence in the form of indexed journal articles.…”

Who reviews for predatory journals? A study on reviewer characteristics

“…The lists contained 10,671 and 11,057 unique journal titles, respectively. Of note, lists of potentially predatory and legitimate journals are inconsistent and sometimes out of reach [5]. In addition, predation in academic publishing is not a simple binary phenomenon but should be understood as a spectrum with varying degrees of illegitimacy [17].…”

“…Prioritizing self-interests at the expense of scholarship, these outlets exploit the open access (OA) model of publishing. They offer to publish articles but do not provide the services one would expect to receive from a legitimate journal [5][6][7]. Amongst other deficiencies, predatory journals do not guarantee archiving and long-term access to their contents [6,8].…”