Research Integrity Corner: Special Issue on Predatory Journals Review

Research integrity corner: Special issue on predatory journals Review Ethical issues in publishing in predatory journals Lorraine E. Ferris*1, Margaret A Winker2 1Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada 2Secretary, World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) *Corresponding author: [email protected] Abstract Predatory journals, or journals that charge an article processing charge (APC) to authors, yet do not have the hallmarks of legitimate scholarly journals such as peer review and editing, Editorial Boards, editorial offices, and other editorial standards, pose a number of new ethical issues in journal publishing. This paper discusses ethical issues around predatory journals and publishing in them. These issues include misrepresentation; lack of editorial and publishing standards and practices; academic deception; research and funding wasted; lack of archived content; and undermining confidence in research literature. It is important that the scholarly community, including authors, institutions, editors, and publishers, support the legitimate scholarly research enterprise, and avoid supporting predatory journals by not publishing in them, serving as their editors or on the Edito- rial Boards, or permitting faculty to knowingly publish in them without consequences. Key words: predatory journals; publication ethics; medical publishing Received: March 12, 2017 Accepted: May 11, 2017 Introduction Predatory journals, or journals that charge an arti- nals (3), making ways to identify them increasingly cle processing charge (APC) to authors, yet do not important. Several authors have suggested useful have the hallmarks of legitimate scholarly journals approaches and authors should apply such sug- such as peer review and editing, Editorial Boards, gestions before submitting their work to a journal editorial offices, and other editorial standards, that may be predatory (4-8). Authors should also pose a new challenge for authors, editors, and consider that an unsolicited email invitation that readers. Their “motive is financial gain, and their promises rapid publication for a wide range of modus operandi is a corruption of the business topics is suspicious at best, probably “too good to model of legitimate open-access publishing” (1). be true”. A manuscript accepted “as is” with no re- These journals sometimes do not reveal the APC viewer comments and with an APC bill also sug- charge to the author at the time of submission but gests a potential problem. At the same time, some eventually bill the authors “without providing ro- authors welcome the fast turnaround to publica- bust editorial or publishing services” (2). Many aca- tion and often relatively low APCs and accept the demics receive almost daily solicitations from lack of standards as a means to achieve their pub- predatory journals; their invitations to submit to lishing ends (9). Therefore, the term “predatory” the journal (often offering very fast turnaround may not always refer to the journal’s relationship time from submission to publication) are often with the author. outside the recipients’ fields of study. Unfortu- Journals that appeared to be scholarly ones but nately, the demarcation between these and legiti- were deceptive have been published previously, mate open-access journals is often unclear. There example, in 2000-2005 when journals were pub- are now an estimated 8000 active predatory jour- lished for undisclosed marketing purposes (10). https://doi.org/10.11613/BM.2017.030 Biochemia Medica 2017;27(2):279–84 ©Copyright by Croatian Society of Medical Biochemistry and Laboratory Medicine. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creative- commons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles in any medium or format and to remix, transform and build upon 279 the material, provided the original work is properly cited and any changes properly indicated . Ferris LE, Winker MA. Ethical issues Other deceptions include hijacked journal web- ing points describe the main ethical issues posed sites, which occur when the registration of a do- by predatory journals (summarized in Table 1). main name is allowed to lapse and a third party claims the URL and puts up a site that mimics the Misrepresentation original journal. Some predatory journals mimic existing journals’ names to confuse potential au- Predatory journals misrepresent who they are and thors into submitting. Some sites offer impact fac- what services they offer, including not providing tors that predatory journals then use to attract au- peer review, editing and indexing services. Their thors, implying they are the established impact websites often lack an editorial office address or factor published by Clarivate Analytics’ (formerly even contact information. They lack information Thomson Reuters) Web of Science. about the academic appointments and locations of the editor and Editorial Board (if one is provided at all). They sometimes list as members of the Edi- Main ethical issues posed by predatory torial Board individuals who are not even aware journals their names appear, much less have a relationship with the journal, or they may list Editorial Board Predatory journals raise a thorny problem for the members or editors who have agreed but are not scholarly literature. Peer review traditionally is the aware they are serving in a predatory journal. They hallmark of scholarly publication, and manuscripts often lack transparency about APCs. They fail to re- published without peer review are considered to veal that published content has not undergone have not passed a critical hurdle, as imperfect as it peer review. They may list indexes in which they is (11). Some manuscripts published in predatory falsely claim their journal is listed. They list the false journals have plagiarized content, are potentially impact factors mentioned above, or they use a fraudulent, or otherwise generally would not be journal name extremely similar to an existing jour- published in a peer-reviewed journal. However, nal. Thus they misrepresent their standards, servic- authors who have conducted legitimate research es, and identities to readers, and often to authors. may also publish in predatory journals, intention- ally or not. A challenge for the research enterprise Lack of editorial and publishing standards is what to do about research published in preda- and best practices tory journals – consider it gray literature, like a pre- print, or consider it flawed until proven otherwise? Predatory journals lack the standards and best The ethical issues around predatory journals make practices established by the scholarly publishing their case different from simply a market-driven community, which evaluate the research and im- response to publishing’s cost and time. The follow- prove the quality of the published work. These TABLE 1. Summary of ethical considerations in publishing in predatory journals Issue Elaboration Misrepresentation Predatory journals distort who they are and what services they offer Lack of editorial and publishing Predatory journals lack standards and best practices as established by the scholarly standards and practices publishing community, which improve the quality and ethics of published work Academic deception Authors misrepresent their scholarly effort by choosing to publish in predatory journals Research published in predatory journals may not receive the recognition it deserves and Research and funding wasted may become inaccessible, hence the effort and risk of research as well as funding are wasted Predatory journals do not archive their content in third party sites making it inaccessible in Lack of archived content the future Undermining confidence in Predatory journals undermine faith that readers and the public have in research literature research literature Biochemia Medica 2017;27(2): 279–84 https://doi.org/10.11613/BM.2017.030 280 Ferris LE, Winker MA. Ethical issues standards and practices include publishing correc- others discover that their research has been pub- tions and retractions as needed, processes to deal lished in a predatory journal, the legitimacy of with alleged research misconduct (to ensure alle- their research will be questioned. The authors will gations of research misconduct are appropriately have to either attempt to retract their research addressed), screening for plagiarized content, re- from the predatory journal and have it evaluated viewing ethics of research conduct, requiring au- and published in a legitimate journal, or accept thorship statements to attempt to exclude ghost that their research may never be considered legiti- and guest authors, and requiring funding and con- mate. Such an outcome wastes research, funding, flicts of interest disclosures. The World Association and the involvement of human study participants of Medical Editors (WAME), Committee on Publica- or animals. tion Ethics (COPE) and Council of Science Editors (CSE) have codes of conduct/professionalism that Lack of archived content help educate editors about their responsibilities (12-14). Publishers (and journal owners) also have Predatory journals do not archive their content in ethical responsibilities (see for example COPE’s third party sites such as CLOCKSS (Controlled Lots Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers) (15). While Of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe: a community-gov- not all legitimate

Load more