Stop this waste of people, animals and money

Abstract

COMMENT © 2 0 1 7 M a c m i l l a n P u b l i s h e r s L i m i t e d , p a r t o f S p r i n g e r N a t u r e . A l l r i g h t s r e s e r v e d .

What is a predatory journal? A scoping review

“…Firstly, while we endeavoured to ensure our systematic search and grey literature appraisal was comprehensive, it is possible that we missed some relevant documents that would have contributed additional empirically derived characteristics of predatory journals. As an example, several authors of this manuscript recently published a paper containing relevant empirical data and predatory characteristics 2 ; however, because this work was published in a commentary format, which did not include an abstract or use the search terms in the article title, it was not picked up in our search. Indeed, part of the challenge of systematically searching on this topic is the lack of agreement and diversity of terms used to describe predatory journals.…”

“…Predatory journals have since become a hot topic in the scholarly publishing landscape. A substantial body of literature discussing the problems created by predatory journals, and potential solutions to stop the flow of manuscripts to these journals, has rapidly accumulated 2– 6 . Despite increased attention in the literature and related educational campaigns 7 , the number of predatory journals, and the number of articles these journals publish, continues to increase rapidly 8 .…”

“…many predatory publishers claim inclusion in DOAJ and this data point is particularly sticky), and probing the content, the underlying literature is limited. Moher, David et al's 1  study seems to be one of the only studies to examine content and evaluates the methodological design and research protocols of articles but, as the authors note, it gets excluded because of its publication in commentary format!…”

Open season: positive changes for increased transparency in the biomedical literature

“…Open access is problematic because, although grounded in the solid altruistic principle of universal access to scientific manuscripts, many so-called predatory journals 21 have a business model of publishing any paper as long as the author will pay for it. This practice has misled countless researchers who thought they were being published in a widely read journal.…”

Transparency in Peer Review

“…Dans un article publié dans PEN eNews intitulé Don't Fall Prey to Predatory Journals [Ne devenez pas la proie des revues prédatrices] je décris comment ces « revues » assaillent les chercheurs afin qu'ils soumettent des manuscrits, pour ensuite ne pas respecter les normes scientifiques ou procéder à une évaluation par les pairs. Un article récent publié dans Nature rapportait que la publication dans les revues prédatrices est maintenant devenue un problème dans les pays à revenu plus élevé [1]. Selon les résultats de l'étude menée par les auteurs sur près de 2000 articles du domaine biomédical issus de 200 revues prédatrices, 15 % des articles provenaient des États-Unis.…”