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Predatory Publishers
Abstract
History of predatory publishers, definition, strings, exampls, and what you should do about them.
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Employing a conversational form, this article presents the views of three editors from established mainstream journals. They first discuss the rise of predatory publishing, then highlight the dangers of publishing in predatory journals, identifying some “red flags” that authors can look out for to avoid such journals. They then offer hints on how prospective authors can increase their chances of acceptance in mainstream journals and how they can get started in research and publishing.
The purpose of this dialogue is to invite a re-envisioning of the current “publish or perish” perspective, which appears to be prevalent in most academic circles. Such negative framing is unhelpful and discouraging, especially to early-career academics who may be unfamiliar with the practices and processes involved. What is needed is a re-envisioning of academic publication from “publish or perish” to “publish and flourish”.
An investigation finds that dozens of academic titles offered ‘Dr Fraud’ — a sham, unqualified scientist — a place on their editorial board.
Full article is freely available at:
http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/1.21662!/menu/main/topColumns/topLeftColumn/pdf/543481a.pdf
Background
A negative consequence of the rapid growth of scholarly open access publishing funded by article processing charges is the emergence of publishers and journals with highly questionable marketing and peer review practices. These so-called predatory publishers are causing unfounded negative publicity for open access publishing in general. Reports about this branch of e-business have so far mainly concentrated on exposing lacking peer review and scandals involving publishers and journals. There is a lack of comprehensive studies about several aspects of this phenomenon, including extent and regional distribution.
Methods
After an initial scan of all predatory publishers and journals included in the so-called Beall’s list, a sample of 613 journals was constructed using a stratified sampling method from the total of over 11,000 journals identified. Information about the subject field, country of publisher, article processing charge and article volumes published between 2010 and 2014 were manually collected from the journal websites. For a subset of journals, individual articles were sampled in order to study the country affiliation of authors and the publication delays.
Results
Over the studied period, predatory journals have rapidly increased their publication volumes from 53,000 in 2010 to an estimated 420,000 articles in 2014, published by around 8,000 active journals. Early on, publishers with more than 100 journals dominated the market, but since 2012 publishers in the 10–99 journal size category have captured the largest market share. The regional distribution of both the publisher’s country and authorship is highly skewed, in particular Asia and Africa contributed three quarters of authors. Authors paid an average article processing charge of 178 USD per article for articles typically published within 2 to 3 months of submission.
Conclusions
Despite a total number of journals and publishing volumes comparable to respectable (indexed by the Directory of Open Access Journals) open access journals, the problem of predatory open access seems highly contained to just a few countries, where the academic evaluation practices strongly favor international publication, but without further quality checks.
Leading scholars and publishers from ten countries have agreed a definition of predatory publishing that can protect scholarship. It took 12 hours of discussion, 18 questions and 3 rounds to reach. Leading scholars and publishers from ten countries have agreed a definition of predatory publishing that can protect scholarship. It took 12 hours of discussion, 18 questions and 3 rounds to reach.
In June 2017, Jeffrey Beall published an opinion piece in Biochemia Medica titled “What I Learned from Predatory Publishers.”1 While there are several elements of this publication that I find inaccurate or problematic, I’m choosing four specific themes within his piece to critique. In the interest of full disclosure, I am Jeffrey Beall’s direct supervisor at the University of Colorado-Denver’s Auraria Library and have been since I began working there in July 2015.