Predatory publishing
Predatory publishing, also known as write-only publishing or deceptive publishing, is an exploitative and fraudulent academic publishing model in which journals or publishers prioritize their own financial or reputational gain over the advancement of scholarship. It is characterized by misleading or false information about editorial practices, a deviation from standard peer-review procedures, lack of transparency, and the use of aggressive or coercive solicitation tactics to attract authors. Predatory publishers often exploit the pressures on researchers to publish, undermining the integrity and credibility of scholarly communication.
The phenomenon of "open-access predatory publishers" was first noticed by Jeffrey Beall around 2012, when he described "publishers that are ready to publish any article for payment". However, criticisms about the label "predatory" have been raised. A lengthy review of the controversy started by Beall appears in The Journal of Academic Librarianship.
Predatory publishers are so regarded because scholars are tricked into publishing with them, although some authors may be aware that the journal is poor quality or even fraudulent but publish in them anyway. New scholars from developing countries are said to be especially at risk of being misled by predatory publishers. A 2022 report found that "nearly a quarter of the respondents from 112 countries, and across all disciplines and career stages, indicated that they had either published in a predatory journal, participated in a predatory conference, or did not know if they had. The majority of those who did so unknowingly cited a lack of awareness of predatory practices; whereas the majority of those who did so knowingly cited the need to advance their careers.
According to one study, 60% of articles published in predatory journals receive no citations over the five-year period following publication.
Actors seeking to maintain the scholarly ecosystem have sought to minimize the influence of predatory publishing through the use of blacklists such as Beall's List and Cabell's blacklist, as well as through whitelists such as the Directory of Open Access Journals. Nevertheless, identifying of predatory journals remains difficult, because it is a spectrum rather than a binary phenomenon. In the same issue of a journal, it is possible to find articles which meet the highest criteria for scientific integrity, and articles that raise ethical concerns.
History
In March 2008, Gunther Eysenbach, publisher of an early open-access journal, drew attention to what he called "black sheep among open-access publishers and journals" and highlighted in his blog publishers and journals which resorted to excessive spam to attract authors and editors, criticizing in particular Bentham Science Publishers, Dove Medical Press, and Libertas Academica. In July 2008, Richard Poynder's interview series brought attention to the practices of new publishers who were "better able to exploit the opportunities of the new environment". Doubts about honesty and scams in a subset of open-access journals continued to be raised in 2009.Concerns for spamming practices from these journals prompted leading open-access publishers to create the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association in 2008. In another early precedent, in 2009, the Improbable Research blog had found that Scientific Research Publishing's journals duplicated papers already published elsewhere; the case was subsequently reported in Nature. In 2010, Cornell University graduate student Phil Davis submitted a manuscript consisting of computer-generated nonsense, which was accepted for a fee. Predatory publishers have been reported to hold submissions hostage, refusing to allow them to be withdrawn and thereby preventing submission in another journal.
Predatory publishing does not refer to a homogeneous category of practices. The name itself was coined by American librarian Jeffrey Beall who created a list of "deceptive and fraudulent" Open Access publishers, which was used as reference until withdrawn in 2017. The term has been reused since for a new for-profit database by Cabell's International. On the one hand, Beall's list as well as Cabell's International database do include truly fraudulent and deceptive OA publishers that pretend to provide services which they do not implement, show fictive editorial boards and/or ISSN numbers, use dubious marketing and spamming techniques, or even hijacking known titles. On the other hand, they also list journals with subpar standards of peer review and linguistic correction.
Studies using Beall's list, or his definitions, report an exponential growth in predatory journals since 2010. A 2020 study has found hundreds of scientists say they have reviewed papers for journals termed 'predatory' — although they might not know it. An analysis of the Publons has found that it hosts at least 6,000 records of reviews for more than 1,000 predatory journals. "The researchers who review most for these titles tend to be young, inexperienced and affiliated with institutions in low-income nations in Africa and the Middle East."
The demonstration of unethical practices in the OA publishing industry has also attracted considerable media attention.
Bohannon's experiment
In 2013, John Bohannon, a staff writer for the journal Science and for popular science publications, tested the open-access system by submitting to a number of such journals a deeply flawed paper on the purported effect of a lichen constituent, and published the results in a paper called, "Who's Afraid of Peer Review?". About 60% of those journals, including journals of Elsevier, SAGE, Wolters Kluwer, and several universities, accepted the faked medical paper. PLOS ONE and Hindawi rejected it."Dr Fraud" experiment
In 2015, four researchers created a fictitious sub-par scientist named Anna O. Szust, and applied on her behalf for an editor position to 360 scholarly journals. Szust's qualifications were dismal for the role of an editor; she had never published a single article and had no editorial experience. The books and book chapters listed on her CV were made-up, as were the publishing houses that published the books.One-third of the journals to which Szust applied were sampled from Beall's List of predatory journals. Forty of these predatory journals accepted Szust as editor without any background vetting and often within days or even hours. By comparison, she received minimal to no positive response from the "control" journals which "must meet certain standards of quality, including ethical publishing practices". Among journals sampled from the Directory of Open Access Journals, 8 of 120 accepted Szust. The DOAJ has since removed some of the affected journals in a 2016 purge. None of the 120 sampled journals listed in Journal Citation Reports offered Szust the position.
The results of the experiment were published in Nature in March 2017, and widely presented in the press.
SCIgen experiments
, a computer program that randomly generates academic computer science papers using context-free grammar, has generated papers that have been accepted by a number of predatory journals as well as predatory conferences.''Federal Trade Commission vs. OMICS Group, Inc.''
On 25 August 2016, the Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against the OMICS Group, iMedPub, Conference Series, and the individual Srinubabu Gedela, an Indian national who is president of the companies. In the lawsuit, the defendants are accused of "deceiving academics and researchers about the nature of its publications and hiding publication fees ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars". The FTC was also responding to pressure to take action against predatory publishers. Attorneys for the OMICS Group published a response on their website, claiming "your FTC allegations are baseless. Further we understand that FTC working towards favoring some subscription based journals publishers who are earring Billions of dollars rom scientists literature", suggesting that corporations in the scientific publishing business were behind the allegations. In March 2019, the FTC won the suit in a summary judgement and was awarded $50,130,811 in damages and a broad injunction against OMICS practices. It is unlikely that the FTC will ever collect the award, since the rulings of US courts are not enforceable in India, and since OMICS does not have property in the US.Characteristics
Recognizing common characteristics of predatory publishers can help to avoid them. Complaints that are associated with predatory open-access publishing include:- Accepting articles quickly with little or no peer review or quality control, including hoax and nonsensical papers.
- Notifying academics of article fees only after papers are accepted.
- Accepting papers which are outside of the declared scope of the journal.
- Aggressively campaigning for academics to submit articles or serve on editorial boards.
- Listing academics as members of editorial boards without their permission, and not allowing academics to resign from editorial boards.
- Appointing fake academics to editorial boards.
- Mimicking the name or web site style of more established journals.
- Making misleading claims about the publishing operation, such as providing false locations.
- Using ISSNs improperly.
- Citing fake or non-existent impact factors.
- Boasting about being "indexed" by academic social networking sites and standard identifiers as if they were prestigious or reputable bibliographic databases.
- Favoritism and self-promotion in peer review.