Publishing in Predatory Journals: Guidelines for Nursing Faculty in Promotion and Tenure Policies

Abstract

Purpose:The purpose of this study was to assess the extent to which academic promotion and tenure (APT) criteria and guidelines in schools of nursing recognize predatory publishing. This assessment included an analysis of APT documents looking specifically for guidance about predatory publications by faculty in schools of nursing. Design: This study used a cross-sectional, descriptive design and was conducted in 2020. Methods: A mixed methods approach was used to collect data from two sources. Data were extracted from APT documents for 92 research-intensive universities found online and specifically focused on documents for universities and for schools of nursing in the United States. Interviews were conducted with a subsample of academic administrators (n = 10) from selected schools. Findings: The majority (57%; n = 50) of APT documents reviewed addressed quality of the journals in which faculty publish. However, very nonspecific terms, such as "high quality" or "peer reviewed" were used. None of the documents reviewed (n = 88) included any reference to predatory journals. Deans who were interviewed validated the analysis of the APT documents. While most deans reported faculty were aware of predatory journals and the risks of publishing in them, formal guidelines for consequences for publishing in predatory journals were not developed or available. Conclusion:This study examined how schools of nursing in research-intensive universities address the issue of predatory journals. APT criteria do not provide guidance to faculty and promotion and tenure committees about issues related to predatory publications as low-quality publication outlets. Recommendations for APT committees, mentors, and faculty are provided. Clinical relevance: Clinicians rely on researchers, many of whom are faculty, to publish rigorous studies that produce evidence they can translate into practice. One measure of the quality of a study's findings is where the paper is published and reflects the level of peer review it has been through. Faculty who publish in predatory journals may not have had their work reviewed by experts; evidence produced may or may not be adequate for translation to guide nursing practice.

Achieving a Professorship with Proper Academic Merit: Discouraging Questionable Publishing

“…However, it will nonetheless be interesting to see the impact of the revised promotion guidelines at KNUST in the years to come. Academic libraries are considered a significant resource for faculty members, mentors, committees, and deans related to publishing practices and questionable journals 20 . In this case study the librarians in the university stress that they are not assessing the quality of the work but only making recommendations regarding the publication outlet.…”

“…Tenure and promotion standards should be developed to discourage faculty members from publishing in questionable journals. However, recent studies show that the majority of academic promotion and tenure criteria as well as guidelines do not describe how the committee assesses the quality of a journal 18,20 . Furthermore, in-depth studies of the institutional and departmental factors encouraging and discouraging questionable publishing is called for 21 .…”

Predatory journals in dermatology: a bibliometric review

“…They betray science by deceiving researchers, especially younger with the promise of speedy open-access publication through spam e-mail (Ring, 2018). Previous research has investigated the impact of predatory journals on academia from diverse perspectives, such as strategies response to predatory journals in various countries (Patwardhan, 2019;Seethapathy et al, 2016;Sheata and Elgllab, 2018), features of predatory publishers' spam innovations (Lund and Wang, 2020) and predatory journals in diverse disciplines (Broome et al, 2021;Raghavan et al, 2014;Sharma and Verma, 2018).To address the challenge of predatory journals, many academic articles suggest establishing checklists and exploring characteristics (e.g. names and spam email contents) to help identify predatory journals and become a Web of Science (WoS) or a Committee on Publication Ethics member (Grudniewicz et al, 2019).…”

Revisiting “Think. Check. Submit.”

“…Mills and Inouye (2020) noted that some faculty, under pressure to publish and advance their careers, may deliberately submit a paper to a predatory journal to garner numerous publications in a short time period. Other challenges facing authors and forcing consideration of a predatory journal may involve lack of proficiency with the English language, impatience with the length of time it takes to move through the review and revision processes for most nursing journals, and difficulty getting a manuscript accepted for publication (Broome et al., 2021).…”

“…Papers published in predatory journals may be at risk for plagiarism (Owens & Nicoll, 2019) or other publication ethics violations. If discovered the questionable manuscript might adversely impact promotion and tenure in university settings (Broome et al., 2021).…”