PREVALENCE OF POTENTIALLY PREDATORY PUBLISHING IN SCOPUS ON THE COUNTRY LEVEL 1 Prevalence of Potentially Predatory Publishing in Scopus on the Country Level Tatiana Savinay∗ Ivan Sterligovy y National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia ∗Russian Foundation for Basic Research, Moscow, Russia.
[email protected] [email protected] F Abstract—We present results of a large-scale study of po- of various degree of competence as well as by tentially predatory journals (PPJ) represented in the Scopus researchers themselves [Leydesdorff et al., 2016]. database, which is widely used for research evaluation. Both In short, research evaluation has become substan- journal metrics and country/disciplinary data have been evalu- tially more formalized relying on various indicators, ated for different groups of PPJ: those listed by Jeffrey Beall which are mostly based on publication and citation and those discontinued by Scopus because of “publication con- counts. This metrics explosion is partially attributed cerns”. Our results show that even after years of discontinuing, hundreds of active potentially predatory journals are still highly to the priorities of many nations and organizations visible in the Scopus database. PPJ papers are continuously to reproduce the success of world leaders in science produced by all major countries, but with different prevalence. and technology. Most ASJC (All Science Journal Classification) subject areas In this paper, we provide a bird’s eye view of the are affected. The largest number of PPJ papers are in engineer- growth of articles in potentially predatory journals ing and medicine. On average, PPJ have much lower citation (PPJ), a global phenomenon stemming from both metrics than other Scopus-indexed journals.