MEDICINE AND PUBLIC POLICY Profiting from the paradigm shift in scholarly journal publishing: The case of predatory publishers Lyombe Eko PhD, Amy Koerber PhD In December 2019, the well-known scientific jour- of the commercial and academic scholarly publishing nal Nature published an article entitled, “Predatory industry have accepted as the appropriate nomencla- journals: no definition, no defence.”1 The collaborative ture for the new category of unorthodox, commercial effort, which was co-authored by a record 35 authors publishers that began to enter the scholarly publishing from scientific, technical, and medical publishers market in the early 2000s. around the world, was illustrated by an eye-catching Grudniewicz et al. advanced the following “consen- piece of art based on the primeval myth of deceptive sus” definition of predatory journals and publishers: appearances —a sinister-looking wolf in sheep’s cloth- ing. In the illustration, the “clothing” that the wolf uses Predatory journals and publishers are entities that as its camouflage is an open academic journal with a prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholar- sheep on its cover. That article raised the alarm about ship and are characterized by false or mislead- a phenomenon that the researchers, who represented ing information, deviation from best editorial and fields of research, education, libraries, publishing, and publication practices, a lack of transparency, and/ research funding, consider a “global threat.”1 or the use of aggressive and indiscriminate solic- itation practices.1 Scholarly publication is, like science, a para- digm, or way of seeing, organizing, and representing Johnson et al. described the modus operandi of reality. Scholarly publishing across the disciplines is predatory journals, whose business model is to prey on comprised of specialized, self-regulating “fields” of unsuspecting researchers and professors who, driven knowledge production, processing, curation, archiving, by the “publish or perish” globalized ethos of American and retrieval.2 Scholarly publication is part of the knowl- higher education, are always on the lookout for publi- edge production-and-creation paradigm of research cation outlets for their research. These journals “often and publication. Predatory journals are considered the promote themselves to potential authors through bulk, tares of this paradigm. Predatory publishers and jour- sometimes SPAM emails, frequently have fictitious edi- nals first caught the attention of the scientific community torial boards and in many cases use the Gold Open in 2008 when Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University Access [article publication charge] model to get money of Colorado-Denver, coined the term to characterize a upfront before an author can detect whether their article 3 small number of open access journals and publishers has been subjected to any peer review whatsoever.” that he included on a blacklist he had published on his It is estimated that there are more than 9,000 verified website. Predatory journals are considered a bane to predatory journals generating some $75 million in rev- the field because they do not care for tried and true enues annually. Furthermore, some predatory publish- publication standards. They ride roughshod over publi- ers have been known to deliberately confuse article cation ethics in order to monetize academic publication submitters. They do this by hijacking some legitimate and make a quick buck. The term, “predatory journal” journals and creating fraudulent websites that mimic or “predatory publisher” has become a contemptuous, the legitimate journal in order to attract submissions 3 denunciative, and exclusionary epithet that members and fraudulently collect article publication charges. When Grudniewicz et al. declared that, “Predatory journals are a global threat,”1 they were not particularly Corresponding author: Amy Koerber Contact Information: [email protected] referring to the financial impact of these publishers DOI: because from a journal economics and market-size perspective, the revenues of predatory journals are The Southwest Respiratory and Critical Care Chronicles 2020;8(35):1–5 1 Eko et al. Profiting from the Paradigm Shift in Scholarly Journal Publishing: The Case of Predatory Publishers miniscule compared to the close to $26 billion dol- scholarly publications in science, technology, and medi- lar revenues of the scientific, technical and medical cine as well as in the humanities and the social sciences.6 publishing industry.3 Rather, the danger that predatory Alberts et al. suggest that generous research funding by publishers pose to the scholarly or academic publish- the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science ing industry is existential because they undermine the Foundation, and numerous other federal agencies, foun- fundamental philosophy and ethics of the academic dations, and academic institutions led to a “remarkable peer review process. Johnson et al. present an inter- outpouring of innovative research from American labo- esting summary of the quality control purpose of peer ratories.”7 However, these professionals suggest that review that is being undermined by predatory jour- the system that has flourished in the last 60 years is no nals. They state that the fundamental purpose of peer longer sustainable and that there is widespread malaise review is “to ensure that only good science or scholar- whose root cause is, “the longstanding assumption that ship gets published, and that work that does not meet the biomedical research system in the United States will acceptable standards does not enter the journal liter- expand indefinitely at a substantial rate.” They believe ature.”3 Scholarly publication has certain frameworks that the expansion of research and research funding or “contextual matrixes,” to borrow the expression of stalled in the last decade as a result of reduction in fed- Pierre Legrand4 that shape and structure its modus eral funding. The result is what they call “hypercompeti- operandi. By skipping the scientific publication para- tion for the resources and positions that are required to digm, predatory journals have introduced discordant conduct science.”7 realities into the scholarly publication process. Some researchers and scientists consciously par- ticipate in the activities of predatory journals—thereby FERMENT IN THE FIELD OF SCHOLARLY giving them a modicum of respectability—under the PUBLICATION AND THE EMERGENCE OF belief (often mistaken) that by reviewing for, and pub- PREDATORY PUBLISHERS lishing in predatory journals, they would be in a posi- tion to point out the shortcomings of these journals and Predatory publishing is a money-making phenom- thereby improve their standards.1,8 These researchers enon that emerged in the first decade of the 21st cen- see predatory journals, despite their poor reputation, tury, and took advantage of the internal contradictions, as an alternative to well-funded, elite “Big Science,” shortcomings, and ferment in the field of scholarly “Big Research,” and legacy science, technology, and journal publication. Predatory publishers emerged in medicine publishing, that is getting bigger and big- the field of scholarly publication at a time of “radical ger, more and more exclusive, and harder for regular discontinuities,” to borrow the expression of Corfield5 researchers and faculty members to feature in. that had led to a ferment in the field of scholarly pub- lication. These discontinuities included: 1) systemic flaws and contradictions, hyper competitiveness and THE INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION disequilibrium of the academic research paradigm and TECHNOLOGY REVOLUTION AND TRANSFER OF scholarly publishing industry, 2) the electronic revolu- KNOWLEDGE CURATION AND RETRIEVAL FROM tion and the resultant digitization and transfer of journal REAL SPACE TO CYBERSPACE archives and publications from the physical spaces of Predatory scholarly publishing emerged during the libraries and archives to the Internet and cyberspace, transition of scholarly publishing from physical to online and 3) the emergence of Open Access Publishing with digital spaces. The availability of databases, comput- its lucrative article publication charge business model. ers, the Internet and commercial interactive server At the end of World War II, the United States was applications facilitated the digitization and transfer of the undisputed center of higher education and scientific knowledge from physical information storage spaces research. The scholarly publishing industry took advan- (libraries and archives) to the dematerialized world of tage of the post-war economic boom and used different cyberspace for easy access and retrieval. Federal pol- business and marketing strategies to create demand for icy orientations promoted a market-based approach 2 The Southwest Respiratory and Critical Care Chronicles 2020;8(35):1–5 Profiting from the Paradigm Shift in Scholarly Journal Publishing: The Case of Predatory Publishers Eko et al. to the Internet and information and communication few oligopolistic multi-multinational corporations and a technologies. In 1997, the Clinton-Gore administration handful of university presses.3 Under this corporate and offered the world a vision and framework for the expan- university publishing model, publishers had a monopoly sion and regulation of global electronic commerce on the unique collections of articles their scholarly jour- on the fledgling Internet. This was a laissez-faire,