Article Predatory Publishers Threaten to Erode Scholarly Communication

Jeffrey Beall might have a silver lining. It is probable That means that Hindawi's profit margin, that over time the editors and publish- at least for that period, was 52%, much Predatory open-access (OA) publishers— ers who care about publishing ethics and higher than Reed Elsevier's 36%.3 the ones that exploit the gold (author- about following industry standards will be Science editors and the scientific com- pays) publishing model for their own prof- increasingly valued for the good work that munity alike ought to be concerned that it—threaten the reputation of rigorously they do. The corruption of the predatory the editor-free Hindawi model will spread peer-reviewed OA journals. Many OA publishers will compel academe to assign throughout the industry, not only because advocates singularly champion the open greater value to the honest publishers, their of the potential loss of positions but because licensing of scholarly works but largely editors, and their publications. of what it will mean for learned pub- ignore the emerging serious quality issues. lishing itself. Reading CSE's White Paper The result is an ever-increasing number of The Editor-in-Chief: on Promoting Integrity in low-quality and even corrupt publishers, A Diminishing Presence? Publications, 2012 Update, I see a long sec- many of whom self-identify as noble for Hindawi Publishing Corporation is an tion called “Editor roles and responsibili- merely functioning as OA publishers—an example of a successful OA publisher. I ties”.4 Reading that section raises the ques- identification that far too many OA advo- do not classify it as a predatory publisher, tions of who will be covering all those roles cates support. but it is valuable to examine Hindawi as a in journals that lack editors and whether The trend of increasing numbers of case study of where OA publishing might the responsibilities will be met at all. predatory OA publishers gives the regret- be taking the scholarly publishing indus- One of the main qualities that may sepa- table impression that the quality aspects try. Hindawi publishes 444 journals spread rate high-quality journals from vanity-press of scholarly publishing are diminishing. among five brands. The brands include the journals is competent editorship, including For example, one major OA publisher is original Hindawi journals, the incongruous- editors-in-chief and manuscript editors. stealthily doing away with journal editors, ly named International Scholarly Research Among the predatory publishers that I leaving accept–reject decisions to its staff Network (which is not a network in the observe and track, most purport to have members. Author misconduct is increas- usual sense of the word), Case Reports in editors-in-chief and editorial boards, but in ing, especially in non-Western countries. Medicine, Conference Papers in Science, many cases the editors are honorary or the The continuing financial crisis has made and Dataset Papers in Science. Hindawi editorial board members' names are added governments worldwide demand more is an OA publisher and charges about US without their permission or knowledge or accountability on the part of the colleges $1,000 as the article-processing fee per are even made up. Among those publishers, and universities that they fund or subsidize. accepted paper. The publisher relies on it is easy to observe the effects of the lack of Accordingly, the schools are increasingly e-mail as its chief method of soliciting edi- editorial oversight. Papers are poorly edited called on to demonstrate a return on invest- torial board memberships and manuscripts. or not edited at all, is obviously ment, and quantifying faculty publications One of the controversial aspects of not carried out, and the many variations of is a common method of making the return Hindawi's peer-review process is that its author misconduct, especially plagiarism, evident. In turn, that increases pressure journals do not have editors-in-chief. are evident in the papers published. on faculty to publish, so many hurriedly Instead, editorial duties are carried out by The poor editing and author misconduct write or copy publications that the growing staff members at the company's headquar- bring into question the suitability of gold market is more than ters in Cairo.1 Contributing to Hindawi's OA as a model for financing scholarly pub- eager to accept and publish for a fee. success is the combination of Egypt’s very lishing. The model focuses on pleasing the In contrast, if you are an honest and con- high unemployment rate and a well-educat- authors rather than the readers because the scientious editor of a science journal, all ed middle class. Hindawi has much lower authors pay the bills. Authors want their the plagiarism and all the OA corruption labor costs than most publishers. Indeed, works to be reviewed and published quickly, Hindawi is very profitable. In a September and they want to submit their papers to a 2012 interview, the company's owner, journal that offers them a good chance of is the scholarly initiatives Ahmed Hindawi, stated that “our results for being accepted—a strategy that saves time by librarian at the Auraria Library at the the first half of 2012 show revenues of $6.3 avoiding the need for multiple submissions. University of Colorado, Denver, Colorado. million with a net profit of $3.3 million.”2 The predatory publishers know that and

18 • Science Editor • January – March 2013 • Vol 36 • No 1 Article continued

tailor their business practices to offer what nals, and this results in a surfeit of recently Recommender systems will be developed their customers, the authors, want. They are launched journals whose titles begin with that filter out low-quality and question- extremely good at exploiting the naiveté of “International Journal of . . . ”. able research and favor research published junior faculty and graduate students. under the careful scrutiny of a well-quali- The Future fied editor-in-chief. Social-media tools as Author Misconduct Divisions among OA advocates have wors- applied to scholarly publishing will help The publishers are not the only players ened the problems surrounding the adop- to separate the high-quality works from in the OA movement that are “gaming” tion of OA as a distribution model: some the low-quality ones, and new metrics will the system. I observe almost daily acts of fight for green (author self-archived) OA, confirm the value of well-edited journals. author misconduct in predatory publish- and others for gold. Any questioning of the In the meantime, however, we all need to ers' journals. Most of what I see involves OA model generally attracts sharp and per- advance our scientific literacy, which now piracy in the form of outright plagiarism sonal criticism. Some advocates seem more must include the ability to detect and avoid or self-plagiarism. It is not uncommon concerned with shutting down commercial scholarly publishing scams.5 for authors to use a previously published publishers than with opening up access to paper as a template for a new paper that scholarly research. References they are writing. In doing so, they change The number of predatory publishers is 1. Poynder R. The OA interviews: Ahmed Hindawi, some of the words but keep the earlier exploding, especially in South Asia. The founder of Hindawi Publishing Corporation. article's structure. When I document such word is out: you can make easy money Accessed 2012 Nov 6. http://poynder.blogspot. plagiarism in e-mails to predatory pub- by setting up a scholarly publishing Web com/2012/09/the-oa-interviews-ahmed-hindawi- lishers, I get a variety of reactions. Some site and accepting payments to publish founder.html. ignore the message. Others quietly remove fourth-rate articles. Never before has it 2. Hindawi A. The OA interviews: Ahmed Hindawi, the article without printing a retraction been so easy to set up and start a schol- founder of Hindawi Publishing Corporation. statement. arly publishing operation. Numerous tem- Accessed 2012 Nov 6. http://poynder.blogspot. It is clear that there is intense pressure to plates exist, and the Public Knowledge com/2012/09/the-oa-interviews-ahmed-hindawi- publish, especially in the developing world, Project's Open Journal Systems open- founder.html. and that the predatory publishers are mere- source software is being used by many cor- 3. Till JE. E-mail sent to the BOAI Forum e-mail ly meeting the need that the pressure is rupt publishers as their journal publishing list on 2012-09-17. Accessed 2012 Nov 6. http:// creating. A correspondent in Tamil Nadu, platform. threader.ecs.soton.ac.uk/lists/boaiforum/2769. India, recently wrote that “our fellows have At the end of the day, all those question- html. started to publish quick papers in the jour- able publishing practices could be good 4. Council of Science Editors, Editorial Policy nals published by these people, as a force news for the traditional scholarly publish- Committee. CSE's white paper on promot- by institute to produce more output. After ers and for OA publishers who strive to ing integrity in scientific journal publications, looking at your website, I have fear that our add value to research by following rig- 2012 Update. Accessed 2012 Nov 6. http:// people [are] falling prey to such journals” orous editorial and scholarly-publishing www.councilscienceeditors.org/i4a/pages/index. (2012 e-mail from HN Kumara to me). The industry standards. High-quality research cfm?pageid=3313. institutes grant more credit for work pub- publications will become more valued in 5. Beall J. Predatory publishers are corrupting open lished in international than national jour- an academe filled with rubbish articles. access. 2012. Nature. 2012;489(7415):179.

CSE's White Paper on Promoting Integrity in Scientific Journal Publications Update Released Spring 2012 View or download at www.councilscienceeditors.org

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