Who is Actually Harmed by Predatory Publishers?

Eve, Martin Paul; Priego, Ernesto

doi:10.31269/triplec.v15i2.867

Cited by 29 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Another important issue is the effects of predatory publishing on different stakeholders as for instance discussed by Eve and Priego [45] or Frandsen [32]. First there is the effect of the articles on the science of other researchers.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How frequently are articles in predatory open access journals cited

B-C¹,

Kanto-Karvonen²,

Jt³

2020

ESPE

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Predatory journals are Open Access journals of highly questionable scientific quality. Such journals pretend to use peer review for quality assurance, and spam academics with requests for submissions, in order to collect author payments. In recent years predatory journals have received a lot of negative media. While much has been said about the harm that such journals cause to academic publishing in general, an overlooked aspect is how much articles in such journals are actually read and in particular cited, that is if they have any significant impact on the research in their fields. Other studies have already demonstrated that only some of the articles in predatory journals contain faulty and directly harmful results, while a lot of the articles present mediocre and poorly reported studies. We studied citation statistics over a five-year period in Google Scholar for 250 random articles published in such journals in 2014 and found an average of 2.6 citations per article, and that 56% of the articles had no citations at all. For comparison, a random sample of articles published in the approximately 25,000 peer reviewed journals included in the Scopus index had an average of 18, 1 citations in the same period with only 9% receiving no citations. We conclude that articles published in predatory journals have little scientific impact.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How frequently are articles in predatory open access journals cited

B-C¹,

Kanto-Karvonen²,

Jt³

2020

ESPE

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“…Note that this definition was published after the article by This is a not peer-reviewed preprint to an article submitted to Science of the Total Environment Sonne et al (2020). In a recent paper, Eve and Priego (2017) queried who is actually harmed by "predatory publishers", and concluded that any harm is negligible to virtually all stakeholder groups, including researchers. However, they also noted that "established publishers have a strong motivation to hype claims of predation as damaging to the scholarly and scientific endeavour while noting that, in fact, systems of peer review are themselves already acknowledged as deeply flawed".…”

Section: (Ii) Open Access Predatory Journalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comments on “Factors affecting global flow of scientific knowledge in environmental sciences” by Sonne et al. (2020)

Pourret

Irawan

Wien

et al. 2020

Science of The Total Environment

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There are major challenges that need to be addressed in the world of scholarly communication, especially in the field of environmental studies and in the context of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Recently, Sonne et al. (2020) published an article in Science of the Total Environment discussing some of these challenges. However, many of the arguments put forward by these authors are lacking precision and are based on an incomplete understanding of Open Access (OA), Plan S, and broader issues in scholarly publishing. In our response, we focus on addressing key elements of their discussion on (i) OA and Plan S, as well as (ii) Open Access Predatory Journals (OAPJ). The authors mischaracterise OA and Plan S as restricting author choice, especially regarding the payment of article-processing charges. The reality is that 'green OA' self-archiving options alleviate all of the risks they mention, and are even the preferred 'routes' to OA as stated by their own institutional and national policies in Denmark. In alignment with this, Plan S is also taking a progressive stance on reforming research evaluation. The assumptions these authors make about OA in the "global south" are also incorrect, and fail to acknowledge some of the progressive work being done in regions like Indonesia and Latin America. Finally, Sonne et al. (2020) highlight the threat that OAPJs face to our scholarly knowledge production system. While we agree generally that OAPJs are problematic, the authors simultaneously fail to mention many of the excellent initiatives helping to combat this threat (e.g., the Directory of Open Access Journals). We call for researchers to more effectively equip themselves with sufficient prior knowledge of relevant systems before making public statements about them, in order to prevent misinformation from polluting the debate about the future of scholarly communication.

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“…Predatory journals may be something of a red herring, in terms of actual harm that they cause (Eve & Priego, 2017). Commentators have argued that the real predators may be the dominant big academic publishers (Olijhoek & Tennant, 2018).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Open and Shut: Open Access in Hybrid Educational Technology Journals 2010 – 2017

Costello

Farrelly

Murphy

2020

IRRODL

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Little is known about open access publishing in educational technology journals that employ a hybrid model which charges authors only if they wish to publish via gold open access. In this study we sought to address this gap in the scholarly understanding of open access publishing in hybrid journals that publish research into the intersection of education and technology. We analysed three categories of article access types: gold, green, and limited access, and collected data on their prevalence in the seven-year period from 2010-2017 across 29 journals. Data was gathered from Scopus, Unpaywall, Sherpa RoMEO, and via manual searches of the journal websites, resulting in a dataset comprising the metadata of 8,479 articles. Our findings highlight that most research remains locked behind paywalls, that open access publishing through legal means is a minority activity for the scholars involved, and that the complexity and costs of legal open access publishing in these journals may be inhibiting the accessibility of research to readers.

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Who is Actually Harmed by Predatory Publishers?

Cited by 29 publications

References 31 publications

How frequently are articles in predatory open access journals cited

How frequently are articles in predatory open access journals cited

Comments on “Factors affecting global flow of scientific knowledge in environmental sciences” by Sonne et al. (2020)

Open and Shut: Open Access in Hybrid Educational Technology Journals 2010 – 2017

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