Predatory Publishing and the Academic Librarian: Developing Tools to Make Decisions

Unsolicited solicitations: identifying characteristics of unsolicited emails from potentially predatory journals and the role of librarians

“…Established and new scholars, from both developing and prestigious institutions alike, have fallen victim to predatory journals, an outcome which researchers theorize may be the product of both the “publish or perish” mentality of academia (i.e., where scholars are pressured to quickly publish research for tenure and promotion) and simple lack of guidance and training on how to identify a potentially predatory journal [ 2 , 3 , 6 , 11 , 12 ]. For researchers, the consequences of submitting manuscripts to a predatory journal are numerous and may include professional embarrassment, loss of publishing opportunities (i.e., publishing research in a predatory journal could prevent the research from being published elsewhere), a negative effect on their impact metrics (as predatory journals typically have fake or inexistent impact metrics, due to their inability to pass quality checks in reputed databases such as Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus), and loss of the money the researcher may have paid for the journal's article processing charge (APC) [ 4 , 5 , 13 ].…”

“…In their 2015 study, Shen & Björk estimated that over 400,000 items per year were being published in predatory journals [1], and Moher et al estimated in 2017 that at least 18,000 funded biomedical research studies had been published in predatory journals [2]. Despite their prevalence, there is no standard definition for predatory journals, a shortcoming likely attributed to their broad, and variable range of characteristics [3][4][5][6]. However, the term "predatory journal" generally refers to journals that have no quality control in their selection process; have little to no peer review, editorial, or preservation services; and exploit open access publication models for financial gain [3,4,[6][7][8].…”

“…However, the term "predatory journal" generally refers to journals that have no quality control in their selection process; have little to no peer review, editorial, or preservation services; and exploit open access publication models for financial gain [3,4,[6][7][8]. Some common characteristics of predatory journals and how to identify them have been compiled in the literature [2,[4][5][6][7][8][9][10].…”

How are academic libraries in Spanish-speaking Latin America responding to new models of scholarly communication and predatory publishing?

“…Submit., Cabell's Whitelist and Blacklist, or the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Some academic librarians, such as Lopez and Gaspard (2020), go further and propose new tools, such as STOPP (Scholarly Tools Opposing Predatory Practices), which they describe as a suite of decision-making tools that includes a conference assessment tool, an email assessment tool, a thesis converter assessment tool, and a website assessment tool, all of which are based on detailed checklists.…”

“…Most available literature focuses on individual library’s efforts in more developed regions, such as North America (e.g. Babb and Dingwall, 2019; Johnston and Boczar, 2019; Lopez and Gaspard, 2020) or Australia (e.g. Zhao, 2014).…”