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Firm action needed on predatory journals

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Jocalyn Clark , executive editor and assistant professor of medicine 1 2 ,
Richard Smith , chair 1 3
1 International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research (icddr,b), Dhaka, Bangladesh
2 University of Toronto, Canada
3 Patients Know Best, London, UK
Correspondence to: J Clark j.clark{at}utoronto.ca

They’re harming researchers in low and middle income countries most, but everyone must fight back

The rapid rise of predatory journals—publications taking large fees without providing robust editorial or publishing services—has created what some have called an age of academic racketeering. 1 Predatory journals recruit articles through aggressive marketing and spam emails, promising quick review and open access publication for a price. There is little if any quality control and virtually no transparency about processes and fees. Their motive is financial gain, and they are corrupting the communication of science. Their main victims are institutions and researchers in low and middle income countries, and the time has come to act rather than simply to decry them.

Unfortunately, predatory publishing is often confused with open access publishing, whereby studies are free to all and can be reused for many purposes. Legitimate open access publishing—which has widely benefited scientific communication—uses all the professional and ethical practices associated with the best science publishing. Predatory publishing upholds few if any of the best practices yet demands payment for publishing. Under traditional models of publishing librarians were sophisticated purchasers of subscriptions, but in this new model many individual researchers are unable to distinguish between reputable and predatory publishers. The Committee on Publication Ethics and others offer advice. 2

The term predatory journals was coined by Jeffrey Beall at the University of Colorado, who maintains a “Beall’s list” of offenders. 3 According to Beall, the number of predatory publishers has risen from 18 in 2011 to nearly 700 in 2015. 3 Most are in low and middle income countries, particularly India, Pakistan, and Nigeria, although they often claim addresses in the US or UK. 4 The names of the journals are not easily distinguished from those of the 20 000 or so genuine journals.

Each week, academic authors receive several email requests to publish in these journals, review for them, or join their editorial boards. Most researchers will simply delete the emails, but some fall victim to them. A recent analysis of the authors of articles in biomedical journals found that authors in predatory journals are more likely to be junior and based in developing countries, especially South Asia, compared with authors of articles in reputable open access journals. 4 This is unsurprising because authors in low and middle income countries are under the same pressure to publish as those in high income countries but often lack the guidance, support, and mentorship that is available in more developed countries. Ironically, cost poses little barrier as predatory publishers usually charge “low enough” fees, and many developing country organisations are externally funded by donors who require research to be published in open access journals.

Lost science

Articles in predatory journals, although publicly available through internet searches, are not indexed in reputable library systems. The articles are not discoverable through standard searches, and experienced readers and systematic reviewers will be wary of citing anything from these journals. The research is thus lost. Discoverability is important to raise the visibility of the work of developing country institutions and the often neglected problems of the south. It’s also important for funders expecting return on their investment in research.

Predatory publishers are thus undermining the core business of generating evidence to improve global health. The journals also pollute the evidence base on which clinical practice and public health policy depend, and, as Beall points out, 5 the weak or absent review systems mean that predatory journals can be “reservoirs of author misconduct,” including plagiarism, falsified data, and image manipulation.

United action

Defeating the predatory publishers will not be easy. As long as they can make money they will continue, and if responses to their emails decline they will simply increase the number of emails they send. They may not be doing anything illegal, and even if they are a legal response seems unlikely to succeed.

Action therefore needs to be on the demand side. The first step is to raise awareness of the problem, and reputable publishers and journals have a role: all journals should publish something on the problem. So far few have published anything. Beall’s list is helpful, but keeping it up to date is difficult: predatory journals are increasing rapidly, and some exist for only a few weeks. 4 Furthermore, his list doesn’t include some new and weak publishers who don’t meet his criteria but are nevertheless questionable. Predatory publishers unsurprisingly are working to discredit Beall’s list, and many legitimate open access publishers have raised concerns about his stance against open access publishing in general. 6 7 There is a helpful list of reputable open access journals, the Directory of Open Access Journals, but unfortunately this is not fail safe either.

The lists are important, but the main response must lie with the researchers and their institutions, supported by their partners and donors. Research institutions in low and middle income countries must improve the oversight, training, and mentorship needed to optimise publication literacy, especially among junior researchers. They must establish clear guidance and requirements for publishing research in legitimate journals. Researchers should probably be required to clear with a central body the journal they plan to submit to, and they should be allowed to submit only to journals that are reputable.

Predatory journals are yet another problem that disproportionately harms people in low and middle income countries, and the response will rest primarily with institutions in those countries. But it’s important that funders, scientific societies, and reputable publishers in high income countries offer full support.

Cite this as: BMJ 2015;350:h210

Competing interests: We have read and understood BMJ policy on declaration of interests and declare the following interests: RS is the chair of the oversight committee of the Cochrane Library, which could be damaged by predatory publishing. He’s also the recipient of a pension from the BMA, which owns The BMJ , which might be damaged by predatory publishing. JC is employed by and RS chairs the board of trustees of icddr,b, which has been and might be further harmed by predatory publishing.

Provenance and peer review: Commissioned; not externally peer reviewed

↵ Truth F. Pay big to publish fast: Academic journal rackets. J Crit Educ Policy Studies 2012 ; 10 : 54 -105. OpenUrl
↵ Committee on Publication Ethics. Principles of transparency and best practice in scholarly publishing. http://publicationethics.org/files/u7140/Principles_of_Transparency_and_Best_Practice_in_Scholarly_Publishing.pdf
↵ Beall J. Beall’s list of predatory publishers. http://scholarlyoa.com/2015/01/02/bealls-list-of-predatory-publishers-2015/ .
↵ Xia J, Harmon JL, Connolly KG, Donnelly RM, Anderson MR, Howard HA. Who publishes in “predatory” journals? J Assoc Inform Sci Technol 2014 Nov 6. doi: 10.1002/asi.23265 . [Epub ahead of print.]
↵ Beall J. Medical publishing triage—chronicling predatory open access publishers. Ann Med Surg 2013 ; 2 (2): 47 -9. OpenUrl CrossRef
↵ Esposito J. Parting company with Jeffrey Beall. Scholarly Kitchen 2013 Dec 16. http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2013/12/16/parting-company-with-jeffrey-beall/
↵ McGlynn T. Retraction of a previous post about pseuodjournals, 10 March 2014. http://smallpondscience.com/tag/pseudojournals/ .

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Predatory journals: The rise of worthless biomedical science

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Address for correspondence: Dr. Sharma H, E-mail: [email protected]

Received 2018 Jul 10; Revised 2018 Aug 9; Accepted 2018 Aug 17.

This is an open access journal, and articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms.

In today's world when biomedical science is experiencing continuous threats from various sources, publication of research articles in predatory journals has created a major havoc. These predatory journals are publishing worthless biomedical science which will haunt genuine researchers and keen readers of authentic biomedical journals for several decades. Hence, researchers of various disciplines and academic experience should be continuously made aware of these predatory publishers and potential ways to recognize them. The main aim of this article is to discuss the issues related to predatory publishing, techniques and strategies used by these publishers to prey young inexperienced researchers, and disadvantages of publishing in predatory journals.

KEY WORDS: Deception, open access publishing, peer research, professional misconduct, publishing, review

Introduction

Publication of the researches in a scholarly indexed journal is the most inspiring goal for young researchers and scientist.[ 1 ] Internet which is considered as one of the greatest invention and advancement in the field of communication and transfer of digital content across the world had played a significant role in digitization of content and transfer of published researchers to be read by loyal readers across the world. But like each coin has two faces, the other unwelcome face of Internet invention and digitization had let to rise of the so-called pseudo or predatory publishing.[ 2 ]

Timely dissemination of scientific information and knowledge to the worldwide scientific community helps in advancement of medical sciences and gaining credit worldwide. The need to subscribe the journals at a high cost to access information of such a great importance had acted as a major force behind the emergence of the open access (OA) movement. The rise of the digital era with the Internet being the most potential source for transmitting information had eased the way that any information is available to anyone, anywhere, anytime, and in any format. The major advantages of OA include worldwide access of knowledge by researchers and students, increased visibility and readership of published information, the potential impact of research is heightened, and finally increased access and sharing of knowledge to worldwide scientific community leading to opportunities for development in the field of medical science by acquiring funds across the world, intercultural communication, and by acting as potential to spark innovation. OA improves the speed, efficiency, and efficacy of research as it also enables computation upon the research literature.[ 3 ]

These pseudo or predatory journals have emerged as a threat to the integrity of academic publishing by targeting eager-to-publish authors or young academic researchers by offering fast or rapid review process for quick publishing. Predatory publishers generally carry a large fleet of journals under their publishing company name or may even be a standalone journal. These pseudo or predatory publishers exploit OA model by exploiting or corrupting peer-review process which is either absent or minimal in nature. In simple terms, these predatory journals are a by-product of the OA movement which began in the early 90s. Such journals lure young and inexperienced scientist by operating through highly sophisticated and mirror image webpage of reputed indexed mainstream journals for manuscript submission to gain monetary benefits in the form of article processing fee or publication fee.[ 4 ]

Development of biomedical science relies on information, which young doctors and researchers retrieve from the Internet and majority of this information comes from researches published in OA journals. But with the rise of OA predatory journals, we are living in the world where we can no longer blindly trust a scientific biomedical journal. Before Internet era, we used to have difficulty in searching relevant information, but with the rise of predatory journals in Internet era gave birth another problem of searching relevant authentic information in a vast sea of heavily contaminated, fake, plagiarized, or manipulated data in the name of biomedical researches.[ 5 ]

Distinguishing a predatory journal and legitimate is not always an easy task. Moreover, with new predatory journals getting online each and every day with short lifespan it is impossible to track such journals. Thus, the only way to avoid such journals is by getting knowledge regarding ways to distinguish them from legitimate index journals. Hence, this review is an attempt to understand the predatory journals their way of operation, motive of operation, and disadvantage of publishing in predatory journal and a way to distinguish them from legitimate journals.

What are Predatory Journals?

According to Merriam Webster's dictionary, the word “Predatory” refers to anything that is inclined or intended to injure or exploit others for personal gain or profit. Similarly, in the world of biomedical journals it refers to journals which prey on young researchers or academicians for personal gain or financial profit through article-processing charges (APCs) for OA articles, without meeting the standard publishing standards.[ 6 ]

How to Recognize a Predatory Journal?

In today's world with cut-throat competition in professional field based on publication as criteria for promotion and increasing tenure of jobs, there is a rise in unethical publication through means of predatory journals. This has triggered the need of understanding regarding predatory journals to increase research publication qualities. Wahyudi (2017), on the basis of 25 invitations for manuscript submission from predatory or fraudulent journals, had provided a generic structure to help new inexperienced upcoming researchers to help them in distinguishing predatory or fraudulent journals from legitimate ones.[ 7 ] Below are some of the characteristics of emails or invitations send by predatory or fraudulent journals:

Typical predatory journals lure their target young experienced researchers for publication with use of attractive and fascinating word in their journal title name like Global, International, Universal, Asian, American, or European[ 8 , 9 , 10 ]

Typically cover a vast variety of subjects and have multidisciplinary scope to attract researchers from all the disciplines[ 9 ]

Fraudulent placement of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) logo on their homepage without really being a member of COPE[ 11 ]

Display false high-impact factor, particularly false or fake impact factors like Scientific Journal Impact Factor (SJIF), Global Impact Factor (GIF), and Journal Impact Factor (JIF) instead of original JIF issued by Clarivate Analytics, or Universal Impact Factor (UIF)[ 12 ]

Attract young researchers by assuring them short and fast review cycle ranging from a day to a week on paying extra surplus cost, that is, typically within 1 month[ 13 ]

Falsely claiming indexing in various reputed indexing like PubMed, Medline, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), or Web of Science by mimicking the logo and placing it on their webpage, even when they are not indexed[ 14 ]

Generally sends email using general email addresses from free providers like gmail.com or yahoo.com for sending unsolicited email or bulk spam emails for manuscript submissions in upcoming issues[ 10 , 13 ]

Frequent invitations for sending manuscripts with invitations for becoming speaker in conference, editor, or reviewer positions in a journal[ 13 ]

Frequent invitations for submitting manuscripts for upcoming “special issues'' particularly beyond the journal's scope, and publication of a larger number of researches in that particular issue[ 13 , 14 ]

A large number of editorial board members from different countries to give the journal an international look with lack of information about the designation and affiliation of editorial members[ 10 , 13 ]

Majorly run from a highly sophisticated website with mirror image like prominent mainstream indexed journals.[ 9 ]

How Do These Journals Operate?

Most of the predatory journals are operated by one person and one PC. These journals send bulk spam invitations to all the authors regarding article submission for which they ask manuscript processing fees and mainly guarantee the acceptance of manuscripts without proper peer-review process which reputable index journals follow and thus jeopardizing the authenticity of biomedical science in the name of reputed index journals.[ 15 ]

Predatory journals use several methods and tactics to prove themselves legitimate and attract the attention of young inexperienced researchers; one such tactics recently revealed under ugly umbrella of predatory publishing is “predatory conferences.” These predatory conferences organized by various predatory publication groups appear to be scholarly but are strictly meant for exploiting money from authors in terms of huge registration charges by promising them getting the manuscripts published in international index journals thus creating sense of legitimacy and a source of gaining pride. This method of attracting young inexperienced researchers to publish legitimate researches in predatory journals not only causes immense loss of funds and valuable time but also cause loss of important legitimate researches which could have proven to be milestone in development of field of medical sciences.[ 16 ]

What are the Disadvantages of Publishing in Predatory Journal?

Weak or absent review system in predatory journals gives opportunities to unethical researches with false, plagiarized, or manipulated data, to enter the larger academic community, thus undermining the quality of researches which are built on such researches and also floods the minds of young and inexperienced researchers with false knowledge who are loyal readers. Thus, predatory journals act as loop holes and impart severe threat to medical science by publishing manuscripts with plagiarized or potentially fraudulent content which otherwise generally would not be published in a peer-reviewed journal.[ 17 ]

Contrarily, several shortcomings of the publishers to meet the requirements of standards of scholarly journal like absent or weak peer-review system, lack of reliable archiving system for scientific articles, and lack of dissemination of these published works to deserving scientific community may cause loss of scientific data, funds, and hard work of genuine researchers.[ 17 ]

What Happens When a Legitimate Research is Being Published in Predatory Journal?

Legitimate articles when published in predatory or pseudo journals are publicly available through Internet searches, but are devoid of getting indexed in the reputed library system, thus making them worthless for the scientific world by getting inaccessible to larger academic community. This not only creates loss of motivation to young researchers but also makes them devoid of adequate credit which would have been their right. Moreover, such predatory or pseudo journals are transient in nature due to continuously changing webpage domain resulting in a loss of legitimate and worthful articles from vanished archives. Thus, many valuable researches are being lost.[ 18 ]

On the other hand, peer-review process in predatory journals by predatory reviewers also gives scope for unethical abuse of reviewing process. A study conducted by Resnik et al . reported unethical and unfortunate evidences of predatory reviewers stealing original authors' ideas and purposely delaying their publications. It was reported that among study participants including researchers, research staff, postdoctoral trainees, and technicians working at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, 6.8% of the respondents reported experiencing predatory reviewers breaching the confidentiality of their manuscript submission, they also reported that predatory reviewers unethically used their ideas or data without their will and permission to gain personal benefits. About 9.2% respondents claimed that reviewers unethically delayed their review process so that he or she could publish their own research on the same topic with similar idea or even may reject manuscript that carries major advances and innovations.[ 19 , 20 , 21 ]

What Happens When Someone Cites the Articles Published in Predatory Journals in Their Work?

The predatory journals are not indexed in major bibliographic databases, such as PubMed, Medline, Web of Science, or Scopus. Also, to avoid potential conflict of interest and allowing plagiarized content to publish without peer reviewing them, predatory journals limit accessibility of articles published in these journals by encrypting them, thus making inaccessible to search engines. Thus, perhaps in many cases, these articles cannot be traced. The authors should be aware that they should not publish in predatory journals as this may not only make them devoid from the credit they deserve as these predatory publications do not count for doctoral thesis or grant applications but also may harm the authors publishing in these journals by permanent blacklisting the authors from further publication in indexed journals.[ 22 ]

World Association of Medical Editors Statement on “Predatory Journals”

The statement of World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) on “Predatory Journals” gives a glimpse for methods which can be used to distinguish legitimate journals from overflooding sea of predatory or pseudo journals. According to WAME's statement, predatory journals are the journals that claim to conduct peer review for all submitted manuscripts and mimic the structure of legitimate journals, but contrary to this they publish almost all the manuscripts submitted without any external peer review and do not follow standard ethical policies that are recommended or advocated by reputed organizations such as WAME, the COPE, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), and the Council of Science Editors (CSE) All these journals do not have any policies or permanent methods regarding long-term archiving of journal content, management of potential conflicts of interest, and transparency of journal processes and policies including fees. In spite of many clues these journals give of being predatory in nature, WAME still cautions all the authors and researchers against the use of Beall's list as the sole method for determining whether a journal is predatory or legitimate. Apart from Beall's list that identifies “predatory” journals, WAME recommends use of DOAJ which identifies legitimate OA journals and “Think. Check. Submit.” checklist developed by a coalition of scholarly publishing organizations.[ 23 , 24 , 25 ]

To What Extent the Predatory Journals are Destroying the Biomedical Sciences

Bohannon J IN 2013 conducted an interesting experiment to check the extent of predatory journals destroying biomedical science and bypassing peer-review system conducted on 304 submissions of an hopelessly flawed error-ridden study describing the benefits of a new cancer drug submitting as imaginary African researcher affiliated to imaginary fake institute in Eritrea. The extent of error in the submitted study was that extreme, even a high school kid with good knowledge of chemistry and the ability to understand a basic data plot could have easily marked the studies' flaws. But surprisingly, out of 304 submissions, 157 were either processed for further review or were straight away sent for publication. This shows the extent of problem the predatory journals create by flooding the web with worthless papers by selling worthless science in the name of publication.[ 26 ]

Why Do Researchers Publish in Predatory Journals?

Many young and inexperienced researchers along with reputed researchers knowingly use predatory or pseudo journals for the purpose of publications to build their resume and CV, to gain employment, fund for further research, grants, and even promotions in their professional carriers. Thus, the authors of medical field who are even aware of the predatory nature of a journal may still publish in it due to pressure to publish.[ 27 , 28 ]

On the other hand, predatory journals use various methods to prove themselves legitimate. One such tactics employed by these predatory journals is getting themselves indexed in fake indexes and displaying fake matrices. According to a report published by a leading newspaper “The Hindu,” a systematic study of the University Grants Commission's (UGC) approved list of journals has revealed that 88% of journals in UGC's white list are predatory, thus revealing the ugly side of predatory publishing.[ 29 ]

UGC admitted that the UGC guidelines had indicated ISSN number as a criterion for a research journal. This indeed was a big mistake because “International Standard Serial Number” (ISSN) number is used to identify newspapers, journals, magazines, and all kinds of periodicals – print and electronic media. These numbers are mainly for identification through bar code and library classification, ordering, and distribution purpose. ISSN numbers are necessary for administration and logistics purposes; however, they do not reflect quality of any journal, periodical, or monograph.[ 30 ]

These journals not only prevent themselves to be identified as predatory journals but also mask themselves from reputed indexing or listings of various reputed institutions or regulating bodies thus creating a havoc in scientific community.

What can be done to Stop these Predatory Journals from Destroying Biomedical Science?

Internet being the most wonderful innovation of century showed light for advancement in field of communication, sharing of knowledge, and advancement of science; on other side, it also showed the shadow of darker side in the form of hacking and cybercrimes. OA movement which was invented with noble dreams of revolution in scholarly publishing through freely accessible research papers to everyone turned into a nightmare with fraudulent journals taking unethical advantage of it. Promotion of OA publishing had given rise to many fake or pseudo journals whose creators practice questionable ethics by selling worthless science in the name of publication.

To deal with this evil of predatory publishing, Jeffre Beall, associate professor of library science working with University of Colorado, created Beall's list (2011–2017) which was a register that keeps a track and monitors these pseudo or predatory journals. Beall's list consisted of an annually compiled list of potential, possible, or probably predatory scholarly OA journals. Further in 2015, he included two new lists of misleading metrics and hijacked journals. Where the function of misleading metrics was to list out companies that generate and display fraudulent and counterfeit impact factors which pseudo or predatory publishers use to deceive researchers to make them think that the journals are legitimate once. While as the list of hijacked journals represented a list of journals that use fake duplicate webpage that exactly mimics the webpage of legitimate journal for deceiving researcher for the purpose of soliciting submissions and collecting fees in the name of article processing fee without making them aware that they are submitting manuscript to predatory journals or pseudo journals.[ 27 , 31 ]

Unfortunately Beall's list was removed and ultimately went dark on January 17, 2017 following removal by the owner under tremendous pressure from publishers, journal editors, and even university but still many reputed institutions use the checklist to list out predatory journals.[ 27 , 31 ]

Beall never supported a regulatory body to oversee scholarly publishers but instead he suggested that best defence against these pseudo and predatory journals involved in unethical publishing will be education and scientific literacy of all the researchers by ability to recognize these journals. For this, Beall's gave Beall's criteria to identify such journals [Tables 1 – 4 ].[ 32 ]

Editor and staff issues in predatory journals[ 32 ]

Other miscellaneous issues in predatory journals[ 32 ]

Business management or publishing policy issues in predatory journals[ 32 ]

Integrity issues in predatory journals[ 32 ]

What is “Think? Check. Submit.” Initiative for Identifying Predatory Journals?

One can attempt to demark predatory journal from legitimate OA journals using “Think? Check. Submit.” initiative. This initiative was started to help researcher gain knowledge to prevent them falling prey to these pseudo or predatory journals. The word “Think” alarms that are you submitting your research to a trusted journal? The word “Check” says to use our check list to assess the journal in which you are submitting, and finally the word “Submit” says only if you can answer “yes” to the questions on our check list then you can proceed submitting your research to the journal you checked. The following checklist is mentioned by these initiative:[ 24 ]

Do you or your colleagues know the journal?

Have you read any articles in the journal before?
Is it easy to discover the latest papers in the journal?

Can you easily identify and contact the publisher?

Is the publisher name clearly displayed on the journal website?
Can you contact the publisher by telephone, email, and post?

Is the journal clear about the type of peer review it uses?

Are articles indexed in services that you use?

Is it clear what fees will be charged?

Does the journal site explain what these fees are for and when they will be charged?

Do you recognize the editorial board?

Have you heard of the editorial board members?
Do the editorial board mention the journal on their own websites?

Is the publisher a member of a recognized industry initiative?

Do they belong to COPE?
If the journal is OA, is it listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)?
If the journal is OA, does the publisher belong to the Open Access Scholarly Publishers' Association (OASPA)?
Is the journal hosted on one of INASP's Journals Online platforms (for journals published in Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Central America, and Mongolia) or on African Journals Online (AJOL, for African journals)?
Is the publisher a member of another trade association?

Criteria for Receipt of the Directory of Open Access Journals Seal

DOAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high-quality, OA, peer-reviewed journals. For a journal to obtain DOAJ seal, the journal should fulfil the following criteria:[ 25 ]

First and foremost is that it should provide permanent identifiers like Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) to all the researches being published. Any journals publishing high-quality researches should also have provision for depositing its digital content with long-term digital preservation or in simpler terms long-term archiving program. Each article should be printed with embed machine-readable CC licensing information and allow the authors to hold the copyright without restrictions or hidden policies. Finally, it should allow generous reuse and mixing of content digitally in accordance with a CC BY, CC BY-SA, or CC BY-NC license and their representative web page should clearly mention about any kind of charges to be borne by the authors to process or publish a paper. For example, APCs, submission charges, page charges, colour charges, or any other processing charges.[ 25 ]

This review article aims to introduce the issues related to predatory publishing and the techniques/strategies used by these predatory publishers to attract young and inexperienced researchers. These issues related to predatory publishing create a need to increase the awareness of young unfledged academic researchers regarding potential consequences of these predatory publishing. It is sought that instead of banning or creating any specific laws or committee for scrutiny of these journals, all the educational academic institutes should focus on delivering specially designed courses for the postgraduate student, young untrained researchers, and faculty members to highlight predatory publishing and creating new ways to curb this maniac by active discussion with researchers.

Financial support and sponsorship

Conflicts of interest.

There are no conflicts of interest.

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Predatory Journals and Publishers

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Educating researchers about predatory journals and publishers is essential to help prevent researchers mistakenly publishing in untrustworthy journals.

UKRIO has compiled a list of resources relating to predatory journals and publishers.

Frandsen, T. F., Moher, D., Shamseer, L., Cobey, K. D., Lalu, M. M., Galipeau, J., … Gunsalus, C. K. (2019). Why do researchers decide to publish in questionable journals? A review of the literature. Nature. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/leap.1214
Grey, A., Bolland, M. J., Avenell, A., Klein, A. A., & Gunsalus, C. K. (2020). Check for publication integrity before misconduct. Nature, 577(7789), 167–169. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03959-6
Grudniewicz, A., Moher, D., Cobey, K. D., Bryson, G. L., Cukier, S., Allen, K., … Lalu, M. M. (2019, December 12). Predatory journals: no definition, no defence. Nature. NLM (Medline). https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03759-y
Moher, D., Shamseer, L., Cobey, K., Lalu, M. M., Galieau, J., Avey, M. T., … Ziai, H. (2017). Stop this waste of people, animals and money. Nature. https://researchmgt.monash.edu/ws/portalfiles/portal/238960887/238948021_oa.pdf

Guidelines and Discussion Documents

In this discussion document, COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) describes the impact of predatory journals on the relevant stakeholders, evaluates proposed interventions and solutions, and present COPE’s perspective on addressing the problem going forward: https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.3.6
A useful example of an institutional resource page giving guidance about predatory journals, from the University of Portsmouth,: https://library.port.ac.uk/predatory-journals-and-publishers.html
From the University of Brunel’s library; the question, ‘How do I know whether a publisher or journal is genuine when publishing my work?’ is explored: https://libanswers.brunel.ac.uk/faq/52606
Andy Nobes from the International Network for the Availability of Scientific (INASP) writing on the AuthorAID blog, ‘A beginner’s guide to avoiding ‘predatory’ journals (using your critical thinking skills’. Published 24 July 2018. https://www.authoraid.info/en/news/details/1310/
Cambell Scholarly Analytics published an A-Z list of issues regarding predatory publishing practices, with one Tweet a week going through the entire alphabet. Simon Linacre republished all 26 tweets in one place, as a primer on how to successfully deal with the phenomenon. https://blog.cabells.com/2020/11/04/the-a-zs-of-predatory-publishing/
Check. Submit. Is an online resource that includes a checklist to help you determine if a journal is to be trusted: http://thinkchecksubmit.org/check/
From the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library (USA), a resource page linking to several checklists to aid evaluation of journals and publishers quality: https://libguides.tulane.edu/predatorypublishers/warning
From the Queen’s University Library (Canada) a useful checklist to help identify deceptive publishers: https://guides.library.queensu.ca/ld.php?content_id=34490666
From COPE, case number: 16-22, discussing the withdrawal of an accepted manuscript from a predatory journal: https://publicationethics.org/case/withdrawal-accepted-manuscript-predatory-journal
An useful independent and anonymous blog entitled ‘Predatory Publishing’, that links to resources and interesting discussion pieces What is Predatory Publishing? | … and should you care? – Predatory Journals and Conferences (predatory-publishing.com)
Check. Submit. Is an online resource that helps you determine if a journal is to be trusted? There is a short video which describes the concept of Think. Check. Submit.: https://thinkchecksubmit.org/
This presentation looks at the problem of predatory publishers and how to spot a one. It was produced by the Office of Scholarly Communication at Cambridge University: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He9GJybTtUw&feature=youtu.be

Infographics

An infographic evaluating predatory journals by Ruth Bueter, Serials Librarian at Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library (USA): https://guides.himmelfarb.gwu.edu/friendly.php?s=PredatoryPublishing/EvaluatingJournals
An infographic highlighting the features of a journal’s website that offer clues as to whether the journal is to be trusted. Created by Peter Burns for Allen Press’s FrontMatter: https://library.stonybrook.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/29_infographic-expand.png
From Predatory Publishing: COPE European Seminar, September 2019 a plenary lecture entitled ‘Perspectives on predatory publishing and thoughts about solutions’ by Deborah Poff, COPE Chair: https://publicationethics.org/files/European%20Seminar%202019-Predatory%20publishing.pdf

Last revised November 2024

Please note that this list of resources is not intended to be exhaustive and should not be seen as a substitute for advice from suitably qualified persons. UKRIO is not responsible for the content of external websites linked to from this page. If you would like to seek advice from UKRIO, information on our role and remit and on how to contact us is available here .

UKRIO would like to thank our Advisory Board and other volunteers for their help in putting this list together.