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Tag: Predatory Publishing

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We’ve been getting a lot of questions recently about Open Access (OA) journals, and predatory journals, and how to tell the difference between them. Navigating the publishing landscape is tricky enough without having to worry about whether or not the journal you choose for your manuscript might be predatory. The concept of predatory journals may be completely new to some researchers and authors. Others who are aware of the dangers of predatory journals might mistake legitimate scholarly OA journals as predatory because of the Article Processing Charges (APCs) charged by OA journals. In today’s post, we’ll explore the differences between OA journals and predatory journals, and how to tell the difference between them.

Open Access Journals

The open access publishing movement stemmed from a need to make research more openly accessible to readers and aims to remove the paywalls that most research was trapped behind under that traditional publishing model. In a traditional, non-OA journal, readers must pay to access the full text of an article published in a journal. This payment may be through a personal subscription, a library-based subscription to the journal, or a single payment for access to a single article. 

This video provides a great overview of why and how OA journals came about:

OA journals shift the burden of cost from the reader to the author by operating under an “author pays” model. In this model, authors pay a fee (often called an “Article Processing Charge” or APC) to make their articles available as open access. Readers are then able to access the full text of that article free of charge and without paying for a subscription. OA articles are accessible for anyone to read and without a paywall. The author fees associated with OA journals can range from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars. OA journals charging APCs is completely normal and paying to publish in an open access journal is not itself a sign that the title is predatory in nature - this is normal practice for open access journals that helps publishers cover the cost of publication.

Open access journals offer all of the same author services that traditional journals offer, including quality peer review and article archiving and indexing services. Legitimate OA journals have clear retraction policies and manuscript submission portals. There are different types of OA journals, including journals that publish only OA articles, and hybrid journals that publish OA articles alongside articles that exist behind a paywall. To learn more about the types of OA research, check our recent blog post on Green, Gold, and Diamond OA models. 

Predatory Journals 

Predatory publishing came about as a response to the open access movement as unethical businesses saw OA journals as a way to make money off of researchers' need to publish. Predatory journals use the OA model for their own profit and use deceptive business practices to convince authors to publish in their journals. 

One key difference between reputable, scholarly OA journals and predatory journals is that predatory journals charge APCs without providing any legitimate peer view services. This means that there are no safeguards to protect a quality research article from being published alongside junk science. Predatory journals typically promise quick peer review, when in reality, no peer review actually takes place. 

When you publish with a legitimate OA journal, the journal provides peer review, archiving, and discovery services that help others find your work easily. Predatory journals do not provide these essential services. Publishing in a predatory journal could mean that your work could disappear from the journal's website at any time, making it difficult to prove that your paper was ever published in said journal. Additionally, because predatory journals are not indexed in popular databases such as Scopus, PubMed, CINAHL, or Web of Science, despite false claims to the contrary, other researchers may never find, read, and cite your research. 

Some general red flags to look for include:

  • Emailed invitations to submit an article
  • The journal name is suspiciously similar to a prominent journal in the field
  • Misleading geographic information in the title
  • Outdated or unprofessional website
  • Broad aim and scope
  • Insufficient contact information (a web contact form is not enough)
  • Lack of editors or editorial board
  • Unclear fee structure
  • Bogus impact factors or invented metrics
  • False indexing claims
  • No peer review information

To learn more about predatory journals, check out our Predatory Publishing Guide.

OA vs. Predatory: How to Tell the Difference

Luckily, identifying scholarly open access journals and predatory journals can be done if you know what to look for, including the red flags listed above. OA journals that are published by reputable publishers (such as Elsevier, Wiley, Taylor and Francis, Sage, Springer Nature, etc.) can be trusted. If a journal is published by a well-known, established publisher, it’s a safe bet that the journal is not predatory in nature. These well-known, large publishers have policies in place that predatory journals lack, including indexing and archiving policies, peer review policies, retraction policies, and publication ethics policies.

Learn more by watching our How to Spot a Predatory Journal tutorial:

Check out the assessment tools available in our Predatory Publishing Guide for more tools that can help you evaluate journals, emails from publishers, and journal websites. There are even some great case studies available on this page to put your newly learned skills into practice! 

For questions about predatory journals, or to take advantage of Himmelfarb’s Journal PreCheck Service, contact Ruth Bueter (rbueter@gwu.edu) or complete our Journal PreCheck Request Form.  

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Hindawi, an Open Access journal publisher once identified by Jeffrey Beall as a potentially predatory publisher and later labeled as a “borderline case” by Beall, has made great efforts to transform its reputation into that of a reputable, scholarly publisher. The publisher was purchased by Wiley in January 2021, and many hoped that the purchase would add a layer of trustworthiness and legitimacy to the once-questionable publisher’s practices. Recent developments have proved that the path toward implementing scholarly publishing best practices is a long, uphill struggle for Hindawi and Wiley.

In late March 2023, Clarivate removed 19 Hindawi journals from Web of Science when they released the monthly update of their Master Journal List. These 19 journals published 50% of articles published in Hindawi journals in 2022 (Petrou, 2023). The removal of these journals from Web of Science comes after Wiley disclosed they were suspending the publication of special issues due to “compromised articles” (Kincaid, 2023). 

Web of Science dropped 50 journals from its index in March for failure to meet 24 of the quality criteria required to be included in Web of Science. Common quality violations included: adequate peer review, appropriate citations, and content that was irrelevant to the scope of the journal. The 19 Hindawi journals removed from Web of Science accounted for 38% of the total 50 journals removed from the index! Health sciences titles published by Hindawi that were removed from Web of Science include:

  • Biomed Research International
  • Disease Markers
  • Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine
  • Journal of Environmental and Public Health
  • Journal of Healthcare Engineering
  • Journal of Oncology
  • Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity

The potential impact of this decision could be significant for authors. When a journal is no longer included in Web of Science, Clarivate no longer indexes the papers published in the journal, no longer counts citations from papers published in the journal, and no longer calculates an impact factor for the journal (Kincaid, 2023). Authors who publish in these journals will be negatively impacted as many universities factor in these types of metrics into promotion and tenure decisions (Kincaid, 2023).

This is just one of the more recent examples of the struggles Hindawi and Wiley have grappled with since Wiley purchased Hindawi in 2021. Last year, Wiley announced the retraction of more than 500 Hindawi papers that had been linked to peer review rings. Hindawi has also been involved in paper mill activity, publishing articles coming out of paper mills in at least nine of the journals that were delisted. Paper mills are “unethical outsourcing agencies proficient in fabricating fraudulent manuscripts submitted to scholarly journals” (Pérez-Neri et al., 2022).

In the early days of paper mills, plagiarism was the biggest concern. However, paper mills have become more sophisticated and are now capable of fabricating data, and images, and producing fake study results (Pérez-Neri et al., 2022). Pérez-Neri et al. reviewed 325 retracted articles with suspected paper mill involvement from 31 journals and found that these retracted articles produced 3,708 citations (Pérez-Neri et al., 2022). The study also found a marked increase in retracted paper mill articles with the number of paper mill articles increasing from nine articles in 2016, to 44 articles in 2017, 88 articles in 2018, and 109 articles in 2019 (Pérez-Neri et al., 2022). Nearly half of the analyzed retracted papers (45%) were from the health sciences fields (Pérez-Neri et al., 2022). In a pre-print analysis of Hindawi’s paper mill activity, Dorothy Bishop found that paper mills target journals “precisely because they are included in WoS [Web of Science], which gives them kudos and means that any citations count towards indicators such as H-index, which is used by many institutions in hiring and promotion” (Bishop, 2023). 

Another model that has become popular among questionable journals is the “guest editor” model, in which a journal invites a scholar or group of scholars to serve as guest editors for a specific issue of papers on the same topic or theme. MDPI is another publisher once identified by Jeffrey Beall as potentially predatory and has made efforts to turn around its reputation and become known as a reputable scholarly publisher. MDPI has used the guest editor model to help grow its business. In a recent post in The Scholarly Kitchen, Christos Petrou wrote that “the Guest Editor model fueled MDPI’s rise, yet it pushed Hindawi off a cliff” (Petrou, 2023). According to Petrou, the guest editor model accounts for at least 60% of MDPI’s papers. Hindawi has also embraced this model in recent years increasing the number of papers published under the guest editor model from 17% of papers in 2019 to 53% of papers published in 2022 (Petrou, 2023). Hindawi’s use of the guest editor model contributed to its exploitation by paper mills, which lead to more than 500 retractions between November 2022 and March 2023 (Petrou, 2023). 

MDPI was not left unscathed by Clarivate’s decision to delist 50 journals from Web of Science. MDPI’s largest journal, the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH), which had an Impact Factor above 4.0, was among the titles delisted in March. IJERPH was delisted for publishing content that was not relevant to the journal’s scope. Petrou argued that while this is likely a problem for hundreds of other journals, Web of Science “sent a message by going after the largest journal of MDPI” (Petrou, 2023). 

The guest editor model is no longer used exclusively by questionable publishers and has slowly been embraced by traditional scholarly publishers. Petrou encourages publishers interested in the guest editor model to implement transparent safeguards into this model to uphold editorial integrity. While the scholarly publishing landscape continues to evolve and formerly questionable publishers attempt to gain legitimacy and stabilize their reputations, we must remain vigilant in evaluating the journals in which we choose to publish. Likewise, scholarly publishers must address the research integrity of the articles they publish by ensuring safeguards are in place to prevent the proliferation of paper mill-produced papers from making it through the peer review and screening process and ending up as published papers in trusted journals, only to be retracted once they have been exposed as fraudulent. 

References:

Bishop, D. V. M. (2023, February 6). Red flags for paper mills need to go beyond the level of individual articles: a case study of Hindawi special issues. PsyArXiv Preprints. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/6mbgv

Kincaid, E. (2023, March 21). Nearly 20 Hindawi journals delisted from leading index amid concerns of papermill activity. Retraction Watch. https://retractionwatch.com/2023/03/21/nearly-20-hindawi-journals-delisted-from-leading-index-amid-concerns-of-papermill-activity/#more-126734

Pérez-Neri, I., Pineda, C., & Sandoval, H. (2022). Threats to scholarly research integrity arising from paper mills: A rapid scoping review. Clinical Rheumatology, 41(7), 2241-2248. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10067-022-06198-9

Petrou, C. (2023, March 30). Guest post: Of special issues and journal purges. The Scholarly Kitchen. https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2023/03/30/guest-post-of-special-issues-and-journal-purges/?informz=1&nbd=c6b4a896-51b7-4c2b-abe8-f0c60236adc9&nbd_source=informz

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Selecting a journal in which to publish your research is an important decision. With so many journals from which to choose, it can be daunting to compare journals and avoid publishing in a predatory or questionable journal, all while trying to find submission requirements, peer review information, and author guidelines to inform your decision making process. GW users now have access to Cabells Directory of Publishing Opportunities which can help you compare journals and identify predatory journals to avoid!

GW’s access to Cabells includes access to Journalytics and Predatory Reports. The Journalytics portion provides information on reputable journal titles including manuscript and submission guidelines, discipline, intended audience, peer review information, and acceptance rates. This information can help authors compare journals and make an informed decision regarding where to submit a manuscript for publication. Inclusion in Cabells Journalytics is by invitation only and criteria for inclusion can be found in the Journalytics Selection Policy.

The screenshot below is an example of the submission and review information listed for the Journal of Advanced Nursing found in Cabells Journalytics:

Screenshot of submission and review information.

Journalytics also allows you to compare up to 5 journals by selecting the titles you wish to compare, and clicking on the “Compare 5” button at the top of the search results. The screenshot below shows a side-by-side comparison of 5 emergency medicine journals:

Screenshot of journal comparisons.

The Predatory Reports portion of Cabells tracks journal titles that have been associated with predatory journal publishers based on violations of scholarly publishing standards and best practices. Cabells has established criteria for identifying deceptive, fraudulent, and/or predatory journals and provides a list of violations for each title listed in Predatory Reports. Examples of severe violations include: false qualifications or credential claims; fake ISSNs; fake, non-existent, or deceased editors; false peer review claims; publication of non-academic or pseudo-science papers; false indexing claims; lack of published articles or archives; misleading metrics; and misleading or false fee information. Cabells provides access to the complete list of Predatory Reports Criteria on their website.

The screenshot below shows an example of a list of violations from a title listed on Cabells Predatory Reports:

Screenshot of predatory violoations.

If you’d like a second opinion, or are unable to find a title you are suspicious of listed on Cabells Predatory Reports, don’t hesitate to use Himmelfarb’s Predatory Journal Check-Up Service by contacting Ruth Bueter (rbueter@gwu.edu). 

Whether you want to check to see if a journal in which you are interested in publishing could be a predatory journal, or you want more information about potential journals to which you might want to consider submitting your manuscript, Cabells Directory of Publishing Opportunities can provide you with the concise information you need all from a single, easy-to-use interface! To learn more, or if you have questions about this resource, contact Ruth Bueter (rbueter@gwu.edu). 

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While it’s no secret that predatory publishers have existed for years, there appears to be a recent trend of scam guest editors infiltrating legitimate scholarly journals and taking over special issues of journals published by large, trusted publishers. Publishers including Elsevier, Taylor and Francis, and Springer Nature have all fallen victim to this new tactic used by scammers. It appears that the scholarly publishing community now has to not only be wary of predatory journals, but predatory editors as well.

The Arabian Journal of Geosciences, published by Springer Nature, has published 412 suspicious articles in recent months. Most of these articles were complete nonsense and included topics unrelated to geosciences including swimming, basketball, “sea-level height and aerobics training”, and “sports-injury insurance along with rainfall” (Bartlett, 2021). The founder and editor-in-chief of Arabian Journal of Geosciences claimed that his email account had been hacked, and that he was “just as perplexed as everyone else about how so many ridiculous papers… made it into the journal” (Bartlett, 2021). 

In April 2021, computer science researchers noticed journal articles using strange terms that they called “tortured phrases” (Else, 2021b). The phrases they noticed included terms like “counterfeit consciousness” instead of “artificial intelligence,” and “colossal information” instead of “big data” (Else, 2021b). One Elsevier journal in particular, Microprocessors and Microsystems, seemed to have published 31 of these phrases in a single article! 

In both of these cases, the sham papers were discovered by outside entities - not by journal editors, the journal’s editorial boards, or even by the publisher. The Springer Nature articles were discovered by commenters on PubPeer, “a website that allows readers to dissect scientific papers after they’re published” (Bartlett, 2021). The Elsevier papers were discovered by Guillaume Cabanac and a group of computer scientists working on a study (Else, 2021a). Cabanac and his team suspected that the “tortured phrases” resulted from the use of automated translation software or other software that can be used to help disguise plagiarism (Bartlett, 2021). They identified around 500 questionable articles with “critical flaws” that included nonsensical text and plagiarized text and images (Bartlett, 2021). 

Springer Nature and Elseiver both launched investigations. Elsevier identified 400 articles in which the “peer review process was compromised” (Marcus, 2021). Elsevier issued a statement explaining that “the integrity and rigor of the peer-review process” had fallen “beneath the high standards expected by Microprocessors and Microsystems” (Marcus, 2021). Elsevier also acknowledged that a “configuration error in the editorial system” resulting from a system migration temporarily prevented appropriate editors from handling papers for approval (Else, 2021b). This issue was resolved soon after being discovered. Elsevier began to re-assess all papers that were published in the special issues in question and has made the appropriate retractions and expressions of concern. In addition, the publisher began to take a deeper look into the “overall processes regarding Special Issues in all subject areas” and introduced “further checks to ensure that all accept decisions are confirmed by an Editor in Chief or editorial board member and to alert staff to irregularities as a Special Issue progresses” (Marcus, 2021).

The Springer Nature investigation exposed “deliberate attempts to subvert the trust-based editorial process and manipulate the publication record” according to a spokesperson for the publisher (Else, 2021a). It’s common for journals to publish special issues of articles focusing on a specific topic. It’s also common for these special issues to be “overseen by guest editors who are experts in the research topic, but are not usually involved in the day-to-day editorial work of the journal” (Else, 2021a). In recent years, it seems that the number of guest editors using these special issues to disseminate low quality research has become more noticable. Ivan Oransky of Retraction Watch stated that “it is not clear whether special-issue scamming is becoming more common or whether it is just becoming more visible. I do think that the journals are waking up to it, actually looking for it and having systems in place” (Else, 2021a). 

While it’s alarming that scammers have been able to use special issues of legitimate journals published by well-respected publishers to disseminate low-quality or even pseudo-science articles, it’s encouraging that these publishers are starting to take steps to prevent this from happening in the future. Elsevier now “validates the identities and qualifications of guest editors” in addition to having added the additional measure of having an Editor-in-Chief or editorial board member confirm each paper’s acceptance in an effort to catch irregularities (Else, 2021a). Springer Nature is not only “putting extra checks in place,” but they are “developing artificial-intelligence tools that can identify and prevent attempts to deliberately manipulate the system” (Else, 2021a). Springer Nature also plans to share the evidence they are gathering regarding “how the deceptions are carried out” with other publishers (Else, 2021a). 

References:

Bartlett, T. (2021) Why did a peer-reviewed journal publish hundreds of nonsense papers? The Chronicle of Higher Education, 68(4), https://proxygw.wrlc.org/login?url=https://www.chronicle.com/article/why-did-a-peer-reviewed-journal-publish-hundreds-of-nonsense-papers

Else, H. (2021a). Scammers impersonate guest editors to get sham papers published. Nature, 599(7885), 361–361. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-03035-y

Else, H. (2021b). “Tortured phrases” give away fabricated research papers. Nature, 596(7872), 328–329. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02134-0

Marcus, A. (2021). Elsevier says “integrity and rigor” of peer review for 400 papers fell “beneath the high standards expected.” Retraction Watch [BLOG]. https://retractionwatch.com/2021/07/12/elsevier-says-integrity-and-rigor-of-peer-review-for-400-papers-fell-beneath-the-high-standards-expected/

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Have you heard about predatory publishing, but aren’t sure what it is or how to spot a predatory journal? Himmelfarb Library has a predatory publishing guide that can answer your questions! 

Predatory journals 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” (Grudniewicz et al., 2019). Predatory journals have used the open access publishing model to make profits without providing the same peer-review, archiving, and editorial services that legitimate scholarly open access journals provide. 

COVID-19 has necessitated dramatic shifts in the scholarly publishing industry including fast-tracking research through the peer-review process making research available at record speeds. Preprints, research manuscripts disseminated prior to undergoing peer review, have become a normal part of the scholarly publishing landscape. These changes have made it more difficult to distinguish between legitimate scholarly journals and predatory journals. A recent post about predatory journals during the COVID-19 pandemic highlights the added dangers predatory journals have posed to the academic community.

Himmelfarb’s predatory publishing guide can help you avoid falling into the predatory publishing trap. Learn how predatory journals operate and review the comprehensive list of red flags that will help you identify these journals. Have you received unsolicited emails from journals you’ve never heard of asking you to submit a manuscript for an upcoming issue? View sample emails from predatory publishers that illustrate tactics used by these publishers. 

Learn how to evaluate these journals with the available journal, email, website and conference assessment tools that are available. Practice your evaluation skills with case studies provided. Are you more of a visual learner? Numerous videos on the topic are also available. Many predatory publishers have expanded their business models to include predatory conferences, which are also covered in this guide. 

Whether you are familiar with predatory publishing, or are new to the topic, Himmelfarb’s predatory publishing guide will help you gain a deeper understanding of this important topic and learn how to avoid falling victim to this threat. If you have questions about predatory publishing, contact Ruth Bueter (rbueter@gwu.edu). 

References:

Grudniewicz, A., Moher, D., Cobey, K. D., Bryson, G. L., Cukier, S., Allen, K., ... & Ciro, J. B. (2019). Predatory journals: no definition, no defence. Science (576)7786. 210-212.

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The pandemic has necessitated significant shifts within the scholarly publishing environment. COVID-19 research has reached readers at record speeds, and for many major publishers, been made available at no cost to readers. Preprints are now mainstream and are indexed in PubMed, as well as on preprint servers such as medRxiv and bioRxiv. But are these changes here to stay? And what other changes has COVID-19 brought about within the scholarly publishing world? 

Perhaps the most obvious change in publishing during the past 6 months is the “extraordinary proliferation of research and commentary on the pandemic” (Bell & Green, 2020, p. 379). The scholarly publishing community has placed an increased value on open science. A majority of large publishers have made their COVID-19 content freely accessible. In a recent post on The Scholarly Kitchen, “both the positive (rapid reporting and sharing of information) and the negatives (the glut of bad science being issued as preprints and promoted via mainstream media without proper curation) are now evident, with the good generally outweighing the bad” (Crotty, 2020). 

The need for increased speed of publication has many critics afraid that pushing papers through the peer review process quickly will result in increased retractions. In fact, as of October 15, 2020, RetractionWatch lists 36 retracted COVID-19 papers, including articles from prestigious journals such as  The Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine. Alongside this “crisis in peer review” is a “less widely publicised crisis in peer reviewers, with willing and able peer reviewers increasingly difficult to find” (Bell & Green, 2020, p. 380). While the number of submissions is ever increasing, “academics are baulking at being asked to review them” (Bell & Green, 2020, 380). Additionally, article submissions from women authors have decreased presumably due to the fact that “the effects of lockdown have disproportionately disadvantaged women across the disciplines” (Smart, 2020, p. 196). This has also likely contributed to the shortage of peer reviewers. 

And let’s not forget the financial impact of COVID-19. Researchers are competing for limited grant funding. Many large publishers are freezing subscription prices. Library collection budgets are being cut, forcing libraries to cancel subscriptions to valued resources, which will further impact publishers' and researchers. Research societies that rely on annual meetings for large portions of their income don’t expect to hold large meetings until late in 2021 at the earliest, and expect to see a decline in membership as discretionary income of individual members becomes scarce (Crotty, 2020).  

It’s not all doom and gloom though. On the bright side, “recognition of the need to fund scientific research has never been stronger (Crotty, 2020). Governments and funding agencies now see the value of open science, which “creates the potential for continuing progress through the creation of incentives and eventually, after normality resumes, the dedication of increased funding to both support existing OA models and to drive the creation of new models” (Crotty , 2020). While the landscape of scholarly publishing is constantly evolving, COVID-19 has undoubtedly already had a dramatic influence on this evolution. 

References:

Bell, K., & Green, J. (2020). Premature evaluation? Some cautionary thoughts on global pandemics and scholarly publishing. Critical Public Health, 30:4, 379-383, DOI: 10.1080/09581596.2020.1769406

Crotty, D. (2020, August 4). Two steps forward, one step back: The pandemic’s impact on Open Access progress. The Scholarly Kitchen. https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2020/08/04/two-steps-forward-one-step-back-the-pandemics-impact-on-open-access-progress/

RetractionWatch, (2020). Retracted coronavirus (COVID-19) papers. RetractionWatch [Weblog, accessed October 15, 2020], https://retractionwatch.com/retracted-coronavirus-covid-19-papers/

Smart P. (2020). Publishing during pandemic: Innovation, collaboration, and change. Learned publishing: journal of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers, 33(3), 194–197. https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1314

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Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, research papers have been fast-tracked to publication. The pandemic has necessitated significant shifts in the scholarly publishing model that have resulted in research being made available at record speeds and, for most major publishers, available at no cost. Preprints have become mainstream. While many see these as positive changes, there is a darker side to this shift in scholarly publishing.

Predatory journals, known for their lack of peer review and willingness to publish any article written by someone able to pay the required Article Processing Charges (APCs), have been largely forgotten during the COVID-19 pandemic. Predatory journals are known for their promises of “rapid” publication. But in the time of COVID-19, quick publication has become the norm even among legitimate and highly respected journals. This has led to questions about the quality of peer review and has led to frequent retractions of COVID-19 related articles. 

In a recent article published in The Journal of Academic Librarianship, Teixeria da Silva (2020) states that “the risks to the scholarly community, academic publishing and ultimately public health are at stake when exploitative and predatory publishing are left unchallenged.” Academics and the media alike are reading, discussing and trusting content that has not undergone a rigorous peer review process. “If one considers that this explosion in literature is directly affecting human lives and public health, astute academics need to be able to sift through pro-preprint propaganda, as well as poorly conducted peer review and editorial processing in peer reviewed journals, in order to be able to distinguish valid from invalid research” (Teixeria da Silva, 2020). 

A recent study of predatory publishing in the COVID-19 era analyzed the prevalence of COVID-19-related articles published in known predatory journals. Between January and May 2020, the study found 350 articles were published in 109 predatory journals, and five of these journals were indexed in PubMed/MEDLINE (Vervoort & Shrime, 2020). The study estimated that the amount of money spent to cover APCs for these articles totaled $33,807.41 (Vervoort & Shrime, 2020). 

Vervoort and Shrime (2020) highlighted three major concerns about predatory journals in light of the pandemic:

  1. "Loss of potential valuable biomedical and epidemiological information."
  2. "Spread of misinformation with potentially harmful or negligent consequences."
  3. "Money earned off of unknowing authors in times where many scientists and clinicians have taken pay cuts."

Retraction Watch highlighted a sting article entitled “SARS-CoV-2 was Unexpectedly Deadlier than Push-scooters: Could Hydroxychloroquine be the Unique Solution?” by authors claiming to be from “The Institute for Quick and Dirty Science” in Switzerland. The goal of this sting article was “to highlight a concerning paper in the Asian Journal of Medicine and Health, which they and others suspect of being a predatory publication” (Marcus, 2020). The “concerning paper” included among its authors several hydroxychloroquine partisans, and contains “errors of analysis, raises regulatory questions and sometimes misunderstand the appropriate terms” (Marcus, 2020). 

The authors of the paper in question had claimed that their article was “proof of the efficacy of HCQ,” and that the journal in which it was published was “as serious as the Lancet” (Marcus, 2020). In an effort to prove that this same journal would indeed publish anything as long as the APC has been paid, the sting article authors set out to write and publish a bogus article in this journal. The article was indeed published! Although it has since been retracted due to “serious scientific fraud,” it would not have been published at all had any real peer review taken place prior to publication.

While there is a real need for legitimate research to be published quickly in order to increase our knowledge about COVID-19, authors and readers alike should remember that predatory journals have not taken time off during the pandemic. “The academic community has the duty to respond to these deeply perverse practices, and thereby protect fellow researchers and combat misinformation” (Vervoort & Shrime, 2020). 

 

References:

Marcus, A. (2020). Hydroxychloroquine, push-scooters, and COVID-19: A journal gets stung and swiftly reacts. Retraction Watch, https://retractionwatch.com/2020/08/16/hydroxychloroquine-push-scooters-and-covid-19-a-journal-gets-stung-and-swiftly-retracts/

Teixeira da Silva. (2020). An alert to COVID-19 literature in predatory publishing venues. The Journal of Academic Librarianship. (46)5.

Vervoort, D., Ma, X., & Shrime, M. (2020). Money down the drain: predatory publishing in the COVID-19 era. Canadian Journal of Public Health. https://doi.org/10.17269/s41997-020-00411-5

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Are you looking to publish your research, but need to find a journal in which to publish? Want to find a journal that will ensure your article will be widely read and cited? Choosing where to submit your manuscript can be a daunting task for any researcher. But don’t despair - Himmelfarb Library has resources that can help.

A great place to start is our Journal Selection webinar, part of Himmelfarb’s Get Yourself Published, Promote Your Research webinar series. In this webinar, Sara Hoover, Metadata and Scholarly Communications Librarian, provides an overview of tools and resources that can help you select an appropriate journal for your research. Learn about the difference between aggregation based journal selection tools and publisher based journal selection tools and utilize comparison rubrics to evaluate multiple publications. Additionally, you’ll have a chance to locate journals relevant to your field of study. 

Want to explore some tools to help you choose a journal? Himmelfarb’s Scholarly Publishing Guide has links to numerous tools that can help you select the right journal for your research. Two useful tools to consider are the Cofactor Journal Selector and the Journal/Article Name Estimator (JANE). The Cofactor Journal Selector can help you identify a journal in which to publish based on subject, peer review, open access, speed of review and other considerations. JANE takes a different approach by allowing you to enter your article title and/or abstract and providing a list of potential journals that may be appropriate for your submission.

Another strategy is to search the Health Sciences Research Commons (HSRC), Himmelfarb’s institutional repository. You can search the HSRC by discipline, collection, or school to see where your colleagues have published their research. You could also search for articles on your topic in PubMed and identify potential journals to consider for your research.

An important consideration to keep in mind when choosing a journal is whether or not the journal is predatory in nature. Predatory journals make false peer-review claims while collecting exorbitant fees from authors who publish in their journals. Because these journals do not actually provide peer-review services, your article could be published next to bogus research and will not be widely read or cited. If you’re going to publish, make sure you are choosing a legitimate, scholarly journal for your work! To learn more about predatory publishing, including how to evaluate a journal to determine whether or not it is predatory, check out our Predatory Publishing Guide.

While choosing a journal that’s right for your research isn’t an easy task, librarians can be a great resource for authors in selecting the right journal. If you are getting ready to publish, don’t fret - Himmelfarb has resources that can help!

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Scholarly publishing has undergone a significant transformation with the rise of the Internet. Scholarly journals are now predominantly available in electronic format rather than in traditional print formats.

This shift prompted the introduction of open access publishing - a movement that aims to provide scholarly research to researchers and the public at no cost to the reader, thus removing the cost barrier to access research.

However, this movement has also opened the door for “predatory” journals to use open access model to profit from researchers and faculty who are pressured to publish in order to receive promotion and tenure.  A comparison of the similarities and differences in characteristics of both predatory and legitimate journals could help readers and potential authors spot predatory journals more easily.

A recent article published in the March 2017 issue of BMC Medicine provides the results of just such a comparison. A cross-sectional comparison of potentially predatory, presumed legitimate open access, and presumed legitimate subscription-based biomedical journals was conducted. Roughly 100 randomly selected journals in each category was selected for this review. Each journal was evaluated on criteria within specific characteristics including:

  • Aims & scope
  • Journal name & publisher
  • Homepage integrity (look & feel)
  • Indexing & impact factor
  • Editors & staff
  • Editorial process & peer review
  • Publication ethics & policies
  • Publication model & copyright
  • Journal location & contact

The results are summarized in this infographic:

https://magic.piktochart.com/embed/22961232-predatory-vs-legitimate-can-you-tell-the-difference

Source:
Shamseer, L., Moher, D., Maduekwe, O., Turner, L., Barbour, V., Burch, R., & ... Shea, B. J. (2017). Potential predatory and legitimate biomedical journals: can you tell the difference? A cross-sectional comparison. BMC Medicine, 15(1), 28. doi:10.1186/s12916-017-0785-9

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scholarly_bannerPredatory publishing is a growing problem for faculty, researchers, and librarians.

Predatory publishers may appear legitimate at first glance, promising quick peer review and name recognition, but in fact have little or no editorial control or peer review, and ultimately, no benefit for you as a researcher. This informational session will discuss techniques that predatory publishers use to target faculty and students looking to get published, and what you can do if you are solicited by a questionable publisher.

What: Predatory Publishing: What You Don't Know, Can Hurt You!
Date: 03/29/2017
Time: 12:00pm – 1:30pm
Location: Ross Hall, Lobby C
[Register]

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