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Understanding Predatory Journals Understanding Predatory Publishing Eric Robinson, MLIS Scholarly Communications Librarian University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences What is predatory publishing? Profit Illegitimate High Acceptance Primarily profit False promise of Accept articles that motivated quality may not be rigorous Charge hefty Deceptive/Unethical or accurate publishing fees Do not follow best Often solicit inclusion practices of research Exploit academics’ need to publish Traditional Publication Model Scholarship Content Publishers Product is sold/given to created by create final sold to publishers by authors product market author Who adds the value? Peer Review done by scholars Scholarship Publishers Content sold/given Digital created by to creation of Profit authors publishers publications by author $$$ Federal/Tax/ /Institutional Funding Rise of Open Access Movement 1991 – Arxiv.org 2002 – Budapest Open Access Initiative 2003 - PLoS Biology launches free access $1,500 APC to offset OA 2003 Bethesda Statement on OA Publishing 2004 – Parliamentary hearings on scientific communication 2006 - US Federal Research Public Access Act Article Processing Charges (APCs): A Viable Economic Model for Open Access Content Authors pay Publishers Product is created by publisher to create final released as authors publish product open access Basic Flavors of Open Access Open Access “Gold” Open Access “Green” • Charges authors a • Publisher still charges processing charge (APC) for final content when • Allows them to not released charge for access • Allows authors to self- • Final published version archive for open access is available as open • Content often access immediately embargoed Hybrid Open Access Hybrid Open Access • Utilizes some form of both Green and Gold • Some may be gold access (APC) • Some behind subscription wall or green • Offered by most traditional publishers • About 10,000 in 2016 Other Flavors/Fee structures Author home pages Partial E-print Archives (IRs) Geographic Subsidized Indexing Dual Mode Page fees Delayed Access SOAR@USA (soar.usa.edu) Authors pay Retention to have of many articles author published Benefits of rights Open Access Wide No cost to audience readers Professional motivation of authors to publish Low cost dissemination Publisher benefits from high- Improved access to volume publication What’s the scholarship Conflicts with commitment to Reach larger audience quality problem? More information available Devaluation of peer review to researchers Poorly vetted research entering scholarly arena Enter the villain of our story Traditional Publishers Predatory Publishers Primary mission to Mission to make money disseminate quality Shortcut peer review research Exist for profit alone Extensive peer review May exist only briefly Extensive profits Stable entities Beall’s criteria for predatory publishing 01 02 03 04 05 May not adhere to Same editorial True center of Journals seem Contributions broadly accepted board listed from operations is designed to solicited with mass standards of multiple journals opaque deceive about messaging scholarly institutional publication affiliation Beall, J. (2016). Best practices for scholarly authors in the age of predatory journals. The Annals of The Royal College of Surgeons of England, 98(2), 77–79. Bohannon’s Experiment (2013) Submitted error-ridden paper to 304 journal publishers 82% of the journals on Beall’s list that received the paper accepted it 45% on the DOAJ that received that received the paper accepted it Bohannon, John (2013). Who’s afraid of peer review. Science. 342(6154): 60–55. doi:10.1126/science.342.6154.60. PMID 24092725. Source: Matthews, D. (2016). Journals and publishers setting sights on the unwary. Times Higher Education, (2238). Source: Shen, C. & Bjork, B. C. (2015). ‘Predatory’ open access: A longitudinal study of article volumes and market characteristics. BMC Medicine, 13(230). Safi, M. (2014, November 25). Journal accepts bogus paper requesting removal from mailing list. The Guardian. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/australia- news/2014/nov/25/journal-accepts-paper-requesting- removal-from-mailing-list High volume Claim ultra-fast publication turnaround How to Mass electronic solicitation, even outside the scope of the journal identify a Often manipulative spam that praises the work of predatory the author May publish articles with no relevance to the publisher discipline of the journal How narrow and related is the scope of publications? Promise rigorous peer-review but accept any paid submission Does the journal explicitly lay out its peer review process? False prestige How to False claims of prestigious editorial board Are the editors someone you have heard of identify a in your field? Do the editors claimed by the journal really predatory serve? publisher Formatted to suggest connection to prestigious organization Does the institution claim a connection to the journal? Claim high impact factor with no validity • Thompson Reuters/Journal of Citation Research Impact Factor • Legitimate if imperfect • Can take years to earn • Author level metric H-index • Used by multiple organizations • Legit, but may vary by discipline SNIP • Source Normalized Impact Factor Metrics • Accounts for cross-disciplinary comparison • May not actually be listed in JCR False/misleading • May use a different formula of “impact factors” • May be just be made up entirely • May claim IF within first year High volume How to identify a Fast publication turnaround predatory Little or no peer review publisher Fast/No editing time Wide or unrelated scope Poor Publication Quality How to identify a predatory May be contain very poor grammar/editing publisher Outdated design or style Vague about editing process Distorted or unauthorized images Recognition Is the journal listed in a subject database How to that you use identify a If the journal is open access, is it listed in the directory of open access journals predatory (DOAJ)? publisher Consult with mentors to find respected and well known journal of quality May have title suspiciously close to a reputed journal Unclear Fee Structure Especially upfront acceptance How to charge identify a Low initial article processing predatory charges publisher Numerous charges at each stage Not communicated clearly Scope How to Focus on mass publication identify a Incredibly wide scope predatory Included titles inappropriate to publisher journal title Articles have little or no cohesion Poor Longevity How to Short life-spans identify a Little or no online preservation predatory of previous research publisher No assigned ISSN Check for fake ISSNs of suspicious titles Jeffrey Beall’s List Discontinued but archived Black list of journals Journals added and removed from DOAJ Journals falsely claiming DOAJ inclusion Predatory conferences Misleading metrics https://beallslist.weebly.com/ Journal/Author Name Estimator (JANE) Analyzes abstracts, titles, keywords Locate appropriate journals for publicagtion Shows green/gold open access Predatory journals may appear so check elsewhere Think, Check, Submit Simple checklist Discussion on Twitter: @thinkchecksub https://thinkchecksubmit.org/ OASPA List best practices for transparency Peer-review process Editorial status Publication schedule Conflicts of interest https://oaspa.org Directory of Open Access Journals Worldwide list: 12,332 journals Screened for best practices All open access Searchable by discipline CC license information DOAJ Seal https://doaj.org Librarians Research guides Video tutorials Archived webinars Email Call Chatbox https://library.usa.edu/ Contact me: Eric Robinson, MLIS Scholarly Communications Librarian [email protected] (858) 410-5310 x2410 References Anderson, R. (2018). Scholarly Communication: What Everyone Needs to Know. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. Bartholomew, R. E. (2014). Science for sale: the rise of predatory journals. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 107(10), 384–385. https://doi.org/10.1177/0141076814548526 Beall, J. (2008). Scholarly Open Access: Critical Analysis of Scholarly Open Access Publishing. Now defunct but archived online at https://beallslist.weebly.com. Beall, J. (2016). Best practices for scholarly authors in the age of predatory journals. The Annals of The Royal College of Surgeons of England, 98(2), 77–79. https://doi.org/10.1308/rcsann.2016.0056 Bohannon, John (2013). Who’s afraid of peer review. Science. 342 (6154): 60– 65. doi:10.1126/science.342.6154.60. PMID 24092725. Shamseer, L., Moher, D., Maduekwe, O., Turner, L., Barbour, V., Burch, R., & ... Shea, B. J. (2017). Potential predatory and legitimate biomedical journals: can you tell the difference? A cross-sectional comparison. BMC Medicine, 15(1), 28. doi:10.1186/s12916-017-0785-9 Shen, C. & Bjork, B. C. (2015). ‘Predatory’ open access: A longitudinal study of article volumes and market characteristics. BMC Medicine, 13(230). Suber, P. (2012). Open Access. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Willinsky, J. (2009). The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press..
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