ORIGINAL MEANING – a journal/publisher with a disproportionate increase in subscription price
What is a predatory journal/publisher today
- It prioritizes self-interest (financial profit) over scientific contribution and education
WARNING: financial profit = goal of commercial publishers (Elsevier, Springer, Wiley…) – cannot be judged by this criterion only - Provides false or misleading information
- Deviates from best editorial or publishing practices (lack of quality control, no peer review)
- Not transparent – we don’t know who we are dealing with
- Uses aggressive practices, especially spam email
Practices of predatory journals
- At first glance, they look like regular journals
- Difficult communication with the editorial team
- Wide scope of the journal
- Offer a quick peer review process
- Parasitizing on well-known journal titles, names of well-known personalities in the field mentioned without their awareness/consent (e.g. on the editorial board)
- General journal titles (e.g. journal of current trends in …, journal of research in …, international journal of …)
- False Impact Factor (IF) on significant position (e.g. Global/Universal IF, Scientific Journal IF, etc.)
- Non-complience copyright – e.g. creating an illegal copy of a quality journal website (so called highjacked journal) – all information remains, just change contact details and payment gateway
- Extensive list of databases in which the journal is indexed:
- Provides indexing in indexes without checking the quality of the content (Google, Google Scholar, Crossref)
- Indexing in databases of questionable quality
Predators are not just journals
Publishers with entire portfolios
Predatory book publishers
- So-called vanity press – publishing books to order
- Targets young authors (graduates)
- Author pays for publishing the book
- The publisher does not provide routine editorial work (no quality control)
- High costs / low readership
- Results cannot be further published by a reputable publisher
- Ex. Lambert Academic Publishing – part of the Omniscriptum Publishing Group (formerly VDM Verlag Dr. Müller)
Predatory conferences
- Profit orientation – without meeting the basic goal of bringing experts together and exchanging ideas within a single discipline
- Attractive venue (attracts attendees)
- Basic quality control:
- Verify the identity of the conference organizer
- Check journals (in which papers are to be published), indexing in databases, etc.
- Ex. WASET
Predatory universities
- Promise an excellent education and degree (career boost) – that’s not going to happen
- The goal – to collect the school fees from the students
Basic journal verification
- Verification of the publisher, journal’s editorial office, editorial board members, contact details
- Verification of indexing in reputable databases – if it states IF, the journal must be listed in the Journal Citation Reports index of the Web of Science database
There are also predators that have a real IF factor and thus have made it into the Web of Science or SCOPUS databases. If a journal has a real IF, it is necessary to continue the research.
- Check the regular indexing of the journal in databases – it is important to check the journal is indexed regularly and systematically
- Publication standards (identifiers) and journal web presentation
- Web structure, unique IDs, etc.
- Clear and visible information for authors
- Copyright issues, publication ethics
- Consistent information on the website (individual sections contradict each other – copied)
- Review process
- Is the peer review process clearly described?
- Often too short time for good quality peer review and publication of the manuscript
- Reviews within 2 weeks x publication within 3 weeks – does not show quality very well
- Lack of time to ensure, reach out to quality reviewers
- Lack of time to produce a quality review
- Publication fee (adequacy of the fee to the quality of the journal)
- Be sure to consult with colleagues who publish
- DO NOT CONFUSE: new or underfunded journals with predatory journals
Recommendations for conference verification
- Verify the conference organizers (trusted institution x fictitious institution)
- Publication of papers in a special issue of a journal – check the journal (or publisher)
- Check previous editions of the conference
- Find out the citation rate of papers from previous editions of the conference
- Check the invited speakers
- Obtain maximum information about the conference from colleagues
Predators undermine the scientific process
- Lack of quality control – publishing fraudulent research, filling the space with garbage – pseudoscience
- Waste of resources (funding, time)
- Author does not get results to desired community, readership and citation rate of predator publications is questionable
- Copyright infringement
- E.g. illegal copy of text of highly cited article placed on predator’s website – creates misleading advertising, difficult to remove)
- Damage to reputation (of scientist, institution, archive, OA, science as a whole)
- Scientists are also judged by where they publish
- Results are already published/posted once, cannot be reused for serious publication
- Erosion of trust in science / for science
What can we do with it?
- Training – how to identify predators
- Lists of trusted journals / predator journals
- Lists and websites with control questions
- Reducing institutional pressure to publish
- Discussions on suppressing Gold OA, promoting Green and Diamond OA
Tips (tools, resources) for determining credibility
- Checking the existence of the specified ISSN
- Does not guarantee the quality of the journal – anyone who asks will receive it
- Directory of OA journals
- Quality Standards
- Listing in the registry is based on the judgment of the editor of the region + journals may be awarded the DOAJ Seal if certain criteria are met
- ATTENTION:
- Not all credible OA journals are registered here
- On the other hand, predatory journals may also appear here
- Judging cannot be based on DOAJ ranking only
- Committee on Publication Ethics
- Publisher is a member = verified publisher and journals – all passed credibility checks
- Allows you to check the ISSN portal, the DOAJ directory and COPE at the same time
- NOT ALL QUALITY JOURNALS ARE REGISTERED IN ALL THREE SOURCES !!!
Check indexing in databases
- WOS, Scopus, SJR, PubMed
- Cannot check only indexing (predators can be found here too!) – always check comprehensively
Additional resources
- Think. Check. Submit. (journal verification, monograph)
- Think. Check. Attend. (conference verification)
- OASPA
- Crossref
- Orcid (e.g. for verification of editorial board members)
- Beall’s list of predatory journals – informative list of potentially predatory publishers, journals, books, etc.
It builds on the activities of librarian Jeffry Beall (University of Colorado), who first pointed out this issue. He established criteria for evaluating the quality of journals and created the first list of predatory journals. He published this information in a blog post that was withdrawn by the author in January 2017. - Stop Predatory Practices
- 12 Questions To Assess A Journal/Publisher
- How To Assess a Journal
- Adventures With Predatory Publishing: A Tale of Two Journals (page 4-5)
- Combatting Predatory Academic Journals and Conferences
- Be iNFORMEd: Checklist
- Journal Guide
- Article in the journal Nature: Predatory Journals: No Definition, No Defence