Predatory Publishing
An enormous attention is focused on publication activities, as well as their registration and evaluation in the scientific, research and academic field today. Therefore, scientists, researchers, doctoral students, university libraries and universities or scientific-research institutions all over the world focus not only on publishing activities themselves, but subsequently also on a consistent evaluation of statistics related to publishing. Thanks to such assessment, they can measure their success, collaborate on further research even on an international level and generally quantify their contribution to the field of science, research and progress in general. However, due to the growth of the importance of publications in combination with the remarkable progress in the field of information and communication technologies and the Open Access publishing model, it is possible to notice not only the increasing number of quality publications, but also a significant number of dubious publishing practices and dissemination of so-called predatory journals or organization of predatory conferences.
Predatory publishers try to obtain contributions from scientists and researchers (mainly) through the paid Gold Open Access method by imitating real, trustworthy professional and scientific journals or conferences. Their main goal, however, is to generate profit. Since they are willing to publish articles of any quality for a fee, they consequently produce dubious science, significantly decrease the value of research itself, eventually damage the credibility of authors. Some predatory publishers have even managed to get registered in verified Open Access registers, including Scopus, WoS, or DOAJ databases. Why is publishing in predatory journals harmful? How to recognize fake practices and identify predatory publishers? What to be careful about when publishing?
Publishing in predatory or low-quality journals may cause:
- reduced credibility of the research
- damage to the author's professional reputation or prestige of the workplace
- disruption of fund-raising activities or problems with obtaining grants
- low exposure and citations of the publication
- possible loss of copyright
- issuance of invoices with increased or unexpected fees that were not specified before
- waste of time and money
Questionable predatory practices include:
- sending a large amount of personalized e-mail invitations to publish or attend conferences
- easily searchable, or targeted, or even promoted professional websites that attract the attention of authors, for example via "hot topics" in their disciplinary field
- targeting / addressing individual authors, not the scientific community as a whole
Characteristic features of predatory publishers or journals/conferences include:
- registration of publishers and their addresses in less developed countries in Africa and Asia
- publishers’ address/headquarters not available on the website
- website of above-average quality OR average website with advertisements
- grammatical errors on the publishers’ website or in journals themselves
- graphics of below-average quality or low resolution of images
- unclear specification of the editor-in-chief and presentation of an extensive list of international researchers in the editorial board (that is often made-up) in spite of the fact that the journal is relatively new and unknown
- using adjectives International, Global, World, etc. in the journal title, modifying the name of a quality journal
- indexation in questionable registers (such as Index Copernicus, Universal Impact Factor, Cite Factor, etc.), or false statements regarding indexation in recognized databases (DOAJ, WoS, Scopus)
- use of false scientometric indicators, including the Impact Factor value
- short deadlines for reviewing and fast publication of the contribution
What to be careful about and what to do before deciding where to publish?:
- think about the name/title of the journal
- assess the publisher’s website
- verify the publisher’s address
- check grammar/spelling errors and quality of images in the journal
- verify names of members listed in the editorial board and names of reviewers
- consider the length of the publication process (rapid publishing is suspicious)
- consider the fees (way too low fees are suspicious) and their clear specification
- verify the ISSN of the journal, e.g. on the ISSN portal
- in case of Open Access publications, check their registration in the DOAJ journal list
- verify the veracity of the scientometric data
- check out the Beall’s list of possible predatory journals
- check out the Stop Predatory Journals list of predatory journals and publishers
- visit the Think – Check – Publish website and use the checklist to assess the credibility of the conference organizer or publisher
- if necessary, contact your supervisor, more experienced colleagues, or UK TnUAD to find out whether the publisher/conference organizer is predatory or not