Avoiding publishing in predatory journals: An evaluation algorithm
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7160/eriesj.2020.130305Keywords:
article, blacklists, manuscript, open access, predatory publisher, predatory journal, scientific research, whitelistsAbstract
Academics and scholars need to publish their research results. In addition, they are required to publish scientific papers to prove their research commitment and to achieve certain academic titles in higher education institutions. Globally, there are many scientific journals of well-known publishing houses/universities, which offer opportunities to publish scientific work. One of the recent topics in academic circles is the increasing number of invitations to publish articles via quick procedures, without going through the adequate review process. This phenomenon is threatening academic integrity, as these publishers/journals aim at financial benefits and not contributing to scientific development and progress. There is a gap in the knowledge of the scientific researchers regarding the journal selection to publish their work. Some of them are still unintentionally publishing in such journals, mainly as a lack of information about them. The main purpose of this study is awareness-raising, warning, and guidance of scientific researchers, particularly young researchers by providing information on how to avoid submitting manuscripts in these journals. To achieve this, we have consulted the recent literature and practices of different countries, summarized the most used tools/methods to identify predatory publishers and journals, and lastly, we have developed a guiding algorithm for evaluating them.
References
Bagues, M., Sylos-Labini, M. and Zinovyeva, N. (2018) ‘A walk on the wild side:‘Predatory’ journals and information asymmetries in scientific evaluations’, Research Policy, [Online], Available: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/171025 [11 May 2020].
Beall, J. (2010). “Predatory” open-access scholarly publishers. The Charleston Advisor, Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 10-17.
Beall, J. (2013) ‘Predatory publishing is just one of the consequences of gold open access’, Learned Publishing, Vol. 26, No. 2, pp.79-84. https://doi.org/10.1087/20130203
Beall, J. (2016) ‘Ban predators from the scientific record’, Nature, Vol. 534, No. 7607, pp. 326-327. https://doi.org/10.1038/534326a
Berger, M. (2017) ‘Everything you ever wanted to know about predatory publishing but were afraid to ask’, ACRL 2017 Conference, Baltimore, Maryland, pp. 206-217.
Björk, B.C. (2017) ‘Journal portals–an important infrastructure for non-commercial scholarly open access publishing’, Online Information Review, Vol. 41, No. 5, pp. 643-654. https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-03-2016-0088
Bohannon, J. (2013) ‘Who’s afraid of peer review?’, Science, Vol. 342, No. 6154, pp. 60-65. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.342.6154.60
Bolick, J., Emmett, A., Greenberg, M. L., Rosenblum, B., and Peterson, A. T. (2017) ‘How open access is crucial to the future of science’, The Journal of Wildlife Management, Vol. 81, No. 4, pp. 564-566. https://doi.org/10.1002/jwmg.21216
Butler, D. (2013) ‘The dark side of publishing’, Nature, Vol. 495, No. 7442, pp. 433-435. https://doi.org/10.1038/495433a
Clark, J. (2018) ‘Letter to the editor-predatory journals: Bad for all but especially authors from low and middle income countries’, Acta Medica Portuguesa, Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 184-185. https://doi.org/10.20344/amp.10489
Danevska, L., Spiroski, M., Donev, D., Pop-Jordanova, N., and Polenakovic, M. (2016) ‘How to recognize and avoid potential, possible, or probable predatory open-access publishers, standalone, and hijacked journals’, Prilozi, Vol. 37, No. 2-3, pp. 5-13. https://doi.org/10.1515/prilozi-2016-0011
Fink, A. (2013) Conducting research literature reviews: From the Internet to paper, Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Forrester, A., Björk, B. C., and Tenopir, C. (2017) ‘New web services that help authors choose journals’, Learned Publishing, Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 281-287. https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1112
Frandsen, T. F. (2017) ‘Are predatory journals undermining the credibility of science? A bibliometric analysis of citers’, Scientometrics, Vol. 113, No. 3, pp. 1513-1528. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2520-x
Jalalian, M., and Dadkhah, M. (2015) ‘The full story of 90 hijacked journals from August 2011 to June 2015’, Geographica Pannonica Vol. 19, No. 2, pp. 73-87. https://doi.org/10.18421/GP19.02-06
Kozak, M., and Hartley, J. (2013) ‘Publication fees for open access journals: Different disciplines-different methods’, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Vol. 64, No. 12, pp. 2591-2594. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asi.22972
Kurt, S. (2018) ‘Why do authors publish in predatory journals?’, Learned Publishing, Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 141-147. https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1150
Laine, C., and Winker, M. A. (2017) ‘Identifying predatory or pseudo-journals’, Biochemia Medica, Vol. 27, No. 2, pp. 285-291. https://doi.org/10.11613/BM.2017.031
Memon, A. R. (2016) ‘ResearchGate is no longer reliable: leniency towards ghost journals may decrease its impact on the scientific community’, Journal of Pakistan Medical Association, Vol. 66, No. 12, pp. 1643-1647.
Quek, H. C., and Teo, E. K. (2018) ‘Predatory publishing; pressures, promotions and perils’, Proceedings of Singapore Healthcare, Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 3-5. https://doi.org/10.1177/2010105817749602
Preston, A. (2020) ‘Solving the Mystery of Peer Review for Predatory Journals’, [Online], Available: https://clarivate.com/webofsciencegroup/article/solving-the-mystery-of-peer-review-for-predatory-journals/ [4 July 2020].
Rele, Sh., Kennedy, M., and Blas, N. (2017), Journal Evaluation Tool. LMU Librarian Publications & Presentations, [Online], Available: http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/librarian_pubs/40 [10 Jun 2020].
Richtig, G., Berger, M., Lange‐Asschenfeldt, B., Aberer, W., and Richtig, E. (2018) ‘Problems and challenges of predatory journals’, Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology, Vol. 32, No. 9, pp. 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1111/jdv.15039
Scopus (2018a) The Scopus solution to predatory journals, [Online], Available: https://conf.neicon.ru/materials/28-Sem0417/170417_0930_Steiginga.pdf [27 Sep 2018].
Scopus (2018b), [Online], Available: https://www.scopus.com/ [27 Sep 2018].
Severin, A., Strinzel, M., Egger, M., Domingo, M., and Barros, T. F. (2020) ‘Who reviews for predatory journals? A study on reviewer characteristics.’, BioRxiv. [Online], Available: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2020/03/11/2020.03.09.983155.full.pdf [5 July 2020].
Shamseer, L., Moher, D., Maduekwe, O., Turner, L., Barbour, V., Burch, R., Clark, J., Galipeau, J., Roberts, J. and Shea, B.J. (2017) ‘Potential predatory and legitimate biomedical journals: can you tell the difference? A cross-sectional comparison’, BMC Medicine, Vol. 15, No. 1, 28. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-017-0785-9
Shen, C., and Björk, B. C. (2015), ‘Predatory’open access: a longitudinal study of article volumes and market characteristics’, BMC Medicine Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-015-0469-2
Strielkowski, W. (2018) ‘Setting new publishing standards after the Beall’s list’, The International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 108-110. https://doi.org/10.15171/ijoem.2018.1314
The Directory of Open Access Journals (2018), [Online], Available: https://doaj.org [24 Sep 2018].
Think. Check. Submit (2018), [Online], Available: http://thinkchecksubmit.org/ [23 Sep 2018].
Umlauf, M. G., and Mochizuki, Y. (2018) ‘Predatory publishing and cybercrime targeting academics’, International Journal of Nursing Practice, Vol. 24, No. S1, pp. 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijn.12656
Wallace, F. H., and Perri, T. J. (2018), ‘Economists behaving badly: publications in predatory journals’, Scientometrics Vol. 115, No. 2, pp. 749-766. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2690-1
Web of Science (2018), [Online], Available: https://clarivate.com/products/web-of-science/ [27 Sep 2018].
Whittemore, R., and Knafl, K. (2005) ‘The integrative review: Updated methodology’, Journal of Advanced Nursing, Vol. 52, No. 5, pp. 546-553. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2648.2005.03621.x
Xia, J. (2015) ‘Predatory journals and their article publishing charges’, Learned Publishing, Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 69-74. https://doi.org/10.1087/20150111
Xia, J., Harmon, J. L., Connolly, K. G., Donnelly, R. M., Anderson, M. R., and Howard, H. A. (2015) ‘Who publishes in “predatory” journals?’, Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, Vol. 66, No. 7, pp. 1406-1417. http://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23265
Additional Files
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2020 Albana Berisha Qehaja
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors declare with this manuscript intended for publication to ERIES Journal that:
- all co-authors agree with the publication of the manuscript even after amendments arising from peer review;
- all co-authors agree with the posting of the full text of this work on the web page of ERIES Journal and to the inclusion of references in databases accessible on the internet;
- no results of other researchers were used in the submitted manuscript without their consent, proper citation, or acknowledgement of their cooperation or material provided;
- the results (or any part of them) used in the manuscript have not been sent for publication to any other journal nor have they already been published (or if so, that the relevant works are cited in this manuscript);
- submission of the manuscript for publication was completed in accordance with the publishing regulations pertaining to place of work;
- experiments performed comply with current laws and written consent of the Scientific Ethics Committee / National Animal Care Authority (as is mentioned in the manuscript submitted);
- grant holders confirm that they have been informed of the submitted manuscript and they agree to its publication.
Authors retain copyright and grant ERIES Journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the published work with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in ERIES Journal. Moreover, authors are able to post the published work in an institutional repository with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in ERIES Journal. In addition, authors are permitted and encouraged to post the published work online (e.g. institutional repositories or on their website) as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.
