Predatory publishing - Wikipedia [Link]

org/wiki/Predatory_publishing

Predatory publishing

, also known as [1][2] or ,[3] 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.[4]

"Think. Check. Submit." poster by an

international initiative to help researchers
avoid predatory publishing

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".[5]
However, criticisms about the label "predatory" have been raised.[6] A lengthy review of the
controversy started by Beall appears in .[7]

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.[a] New scholars from developing countries are said to be especially at
risk of being misled by predatory publishers.[9][10][11] A 2022 report found that "nearly a quarter of

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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.[12]

According to one study, 60% of articles published in predatory journals receive no citations over
the five-year period following publication.[13][14]

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 (and even providing a quantitative definition) of predatory journals remains difficult,
because it is a spectrum rather than a binary phenomenon.[15] 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"[16] 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".[17]
Doubts about honesty and scams in a subset of open-access journals continued to be raised in
2009.[18][19]

Concerns for spamming practices from these journals prompted leading open-access publishers
to create the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association in 2008.[16] In another early
precedent, in 2009 the blog had found that Scientific Research Publishing's
journals duplicated papers already published elsewhere;[20] the case was subsequently reported
in .[21] In 2010, Cornell University graduate student Phil Davis (editor of the
blog) submitted a manuscript consisting of computer-generated nonsense (using
SCIgen), which was accepted for a fee (but withdrawn by the author).[22] Predatory publishers
have been reported to hold submissions hostage, refusing to allow them to be withdrawn and
thereby preventing submission in another journal.[23][24]

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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 (OA) 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.[25] 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 (in particular quality peer review) which they do not
implement, show fictive editorial boards and/or ISSN numbers, use dubious marketing and
spamming techniques, or even hijacking known titles.[26] On the other hand, they also list journals
with subpar standards of peer review and linguistic correction.[27]

Studies using Beall's list, or his definitions, report an exponential growth in predatory journals
since 2010.[28][29] 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."[30]

The demonstration of unethical practices in the OA publishing industry has also attracted
considerable media attention.[31]

In 2013, John Bohannon, a staff writer for the journal 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 (through its subsidiary Medknow), and several universities, accepted the
faked medical paper. PLOS ONE and Hindawi rejected it.[31]

In 2015, four researchers created a fictitious sub-par scientist named Anna O. Szust ( is
Polish for "fraudster"), 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.

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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".[32] Among journals sampled from the Directory of Open Access
Journals (DOAJ), 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
(JCR) offered Szust the position.

The results of the experiment were published in in March 2017,[32] and widely presented in
the press.[33][34][35]

SCIgen, 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.[36][37]

On 25 August 2016, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a lawsuit against the OMICS
Group, iMedPub, Conference Series, and the individual Srinubabu Gedela, an Indian national who
is president of the companies.[38] 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".[39] The FTC was also responding to pressure to
take action against predatory publishers.[40] 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.[38] 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.[41][42][43] 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.[44]

Characteristics

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Recognizing common characteristics of predatory publishers can help to avoid them.[45]

Complaints that are associated with predatory open-access publishing include:

• Accepting articles quickly with little or no peer review or quality control,[46] including hoax and
nonsensical papers.[22][47][48]

• Notifying academics of article fees only after papers are accepted.[46]

• Accepting papers which are outside of the declared scope of the journal.[49]

• Aggressively campaigning for academics to submit articles or serve on editorial boards.[50]

• Listing academics as members of editorial boards without their permission,[51][52] and not
allowing academics to resign from editorial boards.[51][53]

• Appointing fake academics to editorial boards.[54]

• Mimicking the name or web site style of more established journals.[53]

• Making misleading claims about the publishing operation, such as providing false locations.[51]

• Using ISSNs[51] improperly.

• Citing fake[55][56] or non-existent impact factors.

• Boasting about being "indexed" by academic social networking sites (like ResearchGate) and
standard identifiers (like ISSNs and DOIs) as if they were prestigious or reputable bibliographic
databases.[57]

• Favoritism and self-promotion in peer review.[58]

Predatory publishers have also been compared to vanity presses.[59][60]

In 2015, Jeffrey Beall used 26 criteria related to poor journal standards and practices, 9 related to
journal editors and staff members, 7 related to ethics and integrity, 6 related to the publisher's
business practices, and 6 'other' general criteria related to publishers.[61] He also listed 26
additional practices, which were 'reflective of poor journal standards' which were not necessarily
indicative of predatory behaviour.

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In 2016, researchers Stefan Eriksson and Gert Helgesson identified 25 signs of predatory
publishing.[62] They warn that a journal will not necessarily be predatory if they meet one of the
criteria, "but the more points on the list that apply to the journal at hand, the more sceptical you
should be." The full list is quoted below:

1. The publisher is not a member of any recognized professional organisation committed to

best publishing practices (like COPE or EASE)

2. The journal is not indexed in well-established electronic databases (like MEDLINE or Web of
Science)

3. The publisher claims to be a "leading publisher" even though it just got started

4. The journal and the publisher are unfamiliar to you and all your colleagues

5. The papers of the journal are of poor research quality, and may not be academic at all (for
instance allowing for obvious pseudo-science)

6. There are fundamental errors in the titles and abstracts, or frequent and repeated
typographical or factual errors throughout the published papers

7. The journal website is not professional

8. The journal website does not present an editorial board or gives insufficient detail on names
and affiliations

9. The journal website does not reveal the journal's editorial office location or uses an
incorrect address

10. The publishing schedule is not clearly stated

11. The journal title claims a national affiliation that does not match its location (such as
" " while being located on another continent) or includes "International"
in its title while having a single-country editorial board

12. The journal mimics another journal title or the website of said journal

13. The journal provides an impact factor in spite of the fact that the journal is new (which
means that the impact cannot yet be calculated)

14. The journal claims an unrealistically high impact based on spurious alternative impact
factors (such as 7 for a bioethics journal, which is far beyond the top notation)

15. The journal website posts non-related or non-academic advertisements

16. The publisher of the journal has released an overwhelmingly large suite of new journals at

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one occasion or during a very short period of time

17. The editor in chief of the journal is editor in chief also for other journals with widely different
focus

18. The journal includes articles (very far) outside its stated scope

19. The journal sends you an unsolicited invitation to submit an article for publication, while
making it blatantly clear that the editor has absolutely no idea about your field of expertise

20. Emails from the journal editor are written in poor language, include exaggerated flattering
(everyone is a leading profile in the field), and make contradictory claims (such as "You have
to respond within 48 h" while later on saying "You may submit your manuscript whenever
you find convenient")

21. The journal charges a submission or handling fee, instead of a publication fee (which
means that you have to pay even if the paper is not accepted for publication)

22. The types of submission/publication fees and what they amount to are not clearly stated on
the journal's website

23. The journal gives unrealistic promises regarding the speed of the peer review process
(hinting that the journal's peer review process is minimal or non-existent)—or boasts an
equally unrealistic track-record

24. The journal does not describe copyright agreements clearly or demands the copyright of the
paper while claiming to be an open-access journal

25. The journal displays no strategies for how to handle misconduct, conflicts of interest, or
secure the archiving of articles when no longer in operation

Scholar Aamir Raoof Memon proposed the following criteria of predatory publishing:[49]

1. The scope is too broad or inconsistent, e.g., it covers both biomedical and non-biomedical
topics, irrespective of the title of the journal. They publish special issues on topics that are
clearly outside the scope of the journal.

2. They accept all submitted papers and pretend to have a peer review process.

3. They are not affiliated with any reputable organization or university.

4. The published papers are of poor quality because they have never been peer-reviewed or
edited. In most of the cases, they publish a large number of papers per issue.

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5. They invite researchers to submit manuscripts with expertise in fields that are clearly
outside the scope of the journal.

6. They state false or misleading information about their indexing service(s) and/or are
indexed in irrelevant agencies or not indexed in relevant databases.

7. They falsify the information about their impact factors or similar metrics. Most of these
journals claim to have an impact factor, despite being too new to have one.

8. They state false or misleading information about its editorial board.

9. They state false or misleading information about the costs involved in publishing with them
or authors are surprised to discover hidden fees.

10. They are not monitored by or member of a regional or international organization.

11. They have no information about the strategy for handling misconduct (such as plagiarism,
salami slicing, or a retraction policy).

12. The website is either not up-to-date or lacks important information about submission
requirements and manuscript processing and reviewing.

13. The manuscripts are submitted through the email of the journal or directly on the journal's
website.

14. They do not usually mention the contact details. There is also false or misleading
information about the location of the journal.

Many scientific abstract and citation databases implemented policies to identify and combat
predatory journals. For example, Scopus automatically flags a journal that is an outlier in two
consecutive years according to any of three criteria comparing it with peer journals in its subject
field[63]

• Substantially higher self-citation rate

• Substantially lower number of citation

• Substantially lower CiteScore

Web of Science implemented somewhat similar criteria, although they do not specify any
quantitative metrics. Also, Web of Science (unlike Scopus) checks for excessive citations of the
works authored by the journal board members.[64]

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As of summer 2024 SciFinder (and Chemical Abstract Service) do not have a publicly disclosed
policy on predatory journals.[65]

A study in 2015 found that predatory journals rapidly increased their publication volumes from
53,000 in 2010 to an estimated 420,000 articles in 2014, published by around 8,000 active
journals.[28][66] Early on, publishers with more than 100 journals dominated the market, but since
2012 publishers in the 10–99 journal size category have captured the largest market share. As of
2022, almost one third of the 100 largest publishers (by journal count) could be deemed
predatory.[67] The regional distribution of both the publisher's country and authorship is highly
skewed, with three-quarters of the authors from Asia or Africa.[28] Authors paid an average fee of
US $178 each for articles to be published rapidly without review, typically within two to three
months of submission.[28] As reported in 2019, some 5% of Italian researchers have published in
predatory journals, with a third of those journals engaging in fraudulent editorial practices.[68]

Causes and impact

The root cause of exploitative practices is the author-facing article-processing charge (APC)
business model, in which authors are charged to publish rather than to read.[69] Such a model
provides incentives for publishers to focus on the quantity of articles published, rather than their
quality. APCs have gained increasing popularity in the last two decades as a business model for
OA, due to the guaranteed revenue streams they offer, as well as a lack of competitive pricing
within the OA market, which allows vendors full control over how much they choose to charge.[70]

Ultimately, quality control relies on good editorial policies and their enforcement, and the conflict
between rigorous scholarship and profit can be successfully managed by selecting which
articles are published purely based on (peer-reviewed) methodological quality.[71] Most OA
publishers ensure their quality by registering their titles in the Directory of Open Access Journals
and complying with a standardised set of conditions.[72]

The majority of predatory OA publishers appear to be based in Asia and Africa, but in one study
over half of authors publishing in them were found to be from "higher-income or upper-middle-
income countries".[73][74][75] It has been argued that authors who publish in predatory journals
may do so unwittingly without actual unethical perspective, due to concerns that North American
and European journals might be prejudiced against scholars from non-Western countries, high

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publication pressure or lack of research proficiency.[11][76] Hence predatory publishing also

questions the geopolitical and commercial context of scholarly knowledge production.[77] Early
career researchers are particularly vulnerable to predatory publishing, as they often face pressure
to publish quickly to establish their academic careers. This, coupled with a lack of awareness of
predatory practices, makes them more susceptible to exploitative publishers.[78] Nigerian
researchers, for example, publish in predatory journals due to the pressure to publish
internationally while having little to no access to Western international journals, or due to the
often higher APCs practiced by mainstream OA journals.[79] More generally, the criteria adopted
by high JIF journals, including the quality of the English language, the composition of the editorial
board or the rigour of the peer review process itself tend to favour familiar content from the
"centre" rather than the "periphery".[80] It is thus important to distinguish between exploitative
publishers and journals – whether OA or not – and legitimate OA initiatives with varying
standards in digital publishing, but which may improve and disseminate epistemic contents.[81]

Response

Lists of journals or publishers deemed either acceptable or unacceptable have been published.
Beall's List was an example of a free blacklist, and Cabells' Predatory Reports is an example of a
paid blacklist database. The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) recommends against
blindly trusting any list of fake or predatory journals, especially if they do not publish the criteria
by which journals are evaluated.[82] Some lists of purported predatory publishers have been
criticized for being based on the authors' personal judgement, rather than objective evidence.[83]
[84]

Lists of acceptable sources, on the other hand, have been criticized as not being relevant to how
academics evaluate journals.[85] Directory of Open Access Journals is an example of a free
whitelist. Other lists of pre-approved journals are available from large research funders.

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Jeffrey Beall

University of Colorado Denver librarian and researcher Jeffrey Beall, who coined the term
"predatory publishing", first published his list of predatory publishers in 2010.[50] Beall's list of
potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers attempted to identify
scholarly open-access publishers with questionable practices.[86] In 2013, reported that
Beall's list and web site were "widely read by librarians, researchers, and open-access advocates,
many of whom applaud his efforts to reveal shady publishing practices."[50] Others have raised
the objection that "(w)hether it's fair to classify all these journals and publishers as 'predatory' is
an open question—several shades of gray may be distinguishable."[87]

Beall's analyses have been called sweeping generalizations with no supporting evidence,[88] and
he has also been criticized for being biased against open-access journals from less economically
developed countries.[89] A 2018 study has shown that Beall's criteria of "predatory" publishing
were in no way limited to OA publishers and that, applying them to both OA and non-OA journals
in the field of library and information science, even top tier non-OA journals could be qualified as
predatory.[90] Similarly, another study reported on the difficulties of demarcating predatory and
non-predatory journals in biomedicine.[91] One librarian wrote that Beall's list "attempts a binary
division of this complex gold rush: the good and the bad. Yet many of the criteria used are either
impossible to quantify..., or can be found to apply as often to established OA journals as to the
new entrants in this area... Some of the criteria seem to make First World assumptions that aren't
valid worldwide."[92] Beall differed with these opinions and wrote a letter of rebuttal in mid-2015.
[93]

Following the investigation, the DOAJ has tightened up its inclusion

criteria, with the purpose of serving as a whitelist, very much like Beall's has been a blacklist.[94]
The investigation found that "the results show that Beall is good at spotting publishers with poor
quality control."[31] However, the managing director of DOAJ, Lars Bjørnshauge, estimates that

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questionable publishing probably accounts for fewer than 1% of all author-pays, open-access
papers, a proportion far lower than Beall's estimate of 5–10%. Instead of relying on blacklists,
Bjørnshauge argues that open-access associations such as the DOAJ and the Open Access
Scholarly Publishers Association should adopt more responsibility for policing publishers: they
should lay out a set of criteria that publishers and journals must comply with to win a place on a
'white list' indicating that they are trustworthy.[50]

Beall has been threatened with a lawsuit by a Canadian publisher which appears on the list. He
reports that he has been the subject of online harassment for his work on the subject. His list
has been criticized[95] for relying heavily on analysis of publishers' web sites, not engaging
directly with publishers, and including newly founded but legitimate journals. Beall has responded
to these complaints by posting the criteria he uses to generate the list, as well as instituting an
anonymous three-person review body to which publishers can appeal to be removed from the
list.[50] For example, a 2010 re-evaluation resulted in some journals being removed from Beall's
list.[50]

In 2013, the OMICS Publishing Group threatened to sue Beall for $1 billion for his "ridiculous,
baseless, [and] impertinent" inclusion of them on his list, which "smacks of literal
unprofessionalism and arrogance".[96] An unedited sentence from the letter read: "Let us at the
outset warn you that this is a very perilous journey for you and you will be completely exposing
yourself to serious legal implications including criminal cases lunched [ ] against you in INDIA
and USA."[97] Beall responded that the letter was "poorly written and personally threatening" and
expressed his opinion that the letter "is an attempt to detract from the enormity of OMICS's
editorial practices".[98] OMICS' lawyers stated that damages were being pursued under section
66A of India's Information Technology Act, 2000, which makes it illegal to use a computer to
publish "any information that is grossly offensive or has menacing character" or to publish false
information.[99] The letter stated that three years in prison was a possible penalty, although a U.S.
lawyer said that the threats seemed to be a "publicity stunt" that was meant to "intimidate".[96]
Section 66A has been criticised in an editorial for its potential for misuse in "stifling
political dissent, crushing speech and ... enabling bullying".[99] Beall could have been sued for
defamation, and would not have been able to fall back on truth as a final defense; under section
66A, the truth of any information is irrelevant if it is grossly offensive.[99]

In an unrelated case in 2015, Section 66A was struck down by the Supreme Court of India, which
found that it had no proximate connection to public order, "arbitrarily, excessively and
disproportionately invades the right of free speech", and that the description of offences is "open-
ended, undefined and vague."[100] As such, it is not possible for the OMICS Group to proceed

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against Beall under section 66A, but it could mount a defamation case. Finally, in August 2016,
OMICS was sued for "deceptive business practices related to journal publishing and scientific
conferences" by the Federal Trade Commission (a US government agency), who won an initial
court ruling in November 2017.[101]

Beall's list was used as an authoritative source by South Africa's Department of Higher Education
and Training in maintaining its list of accredited journals: articles published in those journals will
determine funding levels for their authors; however, journals identified as predatory will be
removed from this list. ProQuest is reviewing all journals on Beall's list, and has started removing
them from the International Bibliography of the Social Sciences.[102]

In January 2017, Beall shut down his blog and removed all its content, citing pressure from his
employer.[103] Beall's supervisor wrote a response stating that he did not pressure Beall to
discontinue his work, or threaten his employment; and had tried hard to support Beall's academic
freedom.[104]

In 2017, Ramzi Hakami reported on his own successful attempt to get an intentionally poor paper
accepted by a publisher on the list and referenced a resurrected version of Beall's list. This
version includes Beall's original list and updates by an anonymous purported "postdoctoral
researcher in one of the [E]uropean universities [who has] a hands-on experience with predatory
journals."[105][106]

At the May 2017 meeting of the Society for Scholarly Publishing, Cabell's International, a
company that offers scholarly publishing analytics and other scholarly services, announced that
it intended to launch a blacklist of predatory journals (not publishers) in June, and said that
access would be by subscription only.[25] The company had started work on its blacklist criteria
in early 2016. In July 2017, both a black list and a white list were offered for subscription on their
website.[107]

Since Beall's list closed, other list groups have started.[108][109] These include Kscien's list,[110][111]
which used Beall's list as a starting point, updating it to add and remove publishers.

In 2020 Ministry of Science and Technology of China ordered Chinese Center of Scientometrics
to launch a blacklist called Chinese Early Warning Journal List (EWJL). EWJL classifies journals
into three grades: low, medium or high risk, rather than two (predatory or not) like most other

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lists. Nevertheless, there is an ongoing criticism of this list as well.[112]

According to a 2020 systematic review of 93 lists, only three[113][114][115] were assessed as

evidence-based.[84]

Multiple science funders have taken special measures against predatory publishing, especially in
terms of national journal rankings.

On 18 September 2018, Zbigniew Błocki, the director of the National Science Centre, the largest
agency that funds fundamental research in Poland, stated that if articles financed by NCN funds
were published in journals not satisfying standards for peer review, then the grant numbers would
have to be removed from the publications and funds would have to be returned to the NCN.[116]

Both the Russian Science Foundation and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research require
their grant recipients to publish only in the journals included into either Web of Science or Scopus
databases.[117] This policy aims at (1) preventing the researchers from falling into the traps of
predatory publishers, without having the Foundations to issue their own lists of acceptable
journals; (2) making sure that the results of their funded works are readily discovered by other
people, as Web of Science and Scopus are subscribed to by most reputable institutions.
However, in parallel with the withdrawal of Clarivate from Russia in 2022 and the pause in
Elsevier services from 2022 onwards, the Web of Science and Scopus listings are no longer
considered as essential by the Russian agencies.[118]

Campaign

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More transparent peer review, such as open peer review and post-publication peer review, has
been advocated to combat predatory journals.[119][120] Others have argued instead that the
discussion on predatory journals should not be turned "into a debate over the shortcomings of
peer review—it is nothing of the sort. It is about fraud, deception, and irresponsibility..."[121]

In an effort to "set apart legitimate journals and publishers from non-legitimate ones", principles
of transparency and best practice have been identified and issued collectively by the Committee
on Publication Ethics, the DOAJ, the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, and the
World Association of Medical Editors.[122] Various journal review websites (crowd-sourced or
expert-run) have been started, some focusing on the quality of the peer review process and
extending to non-OA publications.[123][124] A group of libraries and publishers launched an
awareness campaign.[125][126]

A number of measures have been suggested to further combat predatory journals. Others have
called on research institutions to improve the publication literacy notably among junior
researchers in developing countries.[127] Some organisations have also developed criteria in
which predatory publishers could be spotted through providing tips.[128]

As Beall has ascribed predatory publishing to a consequence of gold open access (particularly
its author-pays variant),[129] one researcher has argued for platinum open access, where the
absence of article processing charges removes the publisher's conflict of interest in accepting
article submissions.[130] More objective discriminating metrics[131] have been proposed, such as
a "predatory score"[132] and positive and negative journal quality indicators.[133] The International
Academy of Nursing Editors (INANE) have encouraged authors to consult subject-area expert-
reviewed journal listings, such as the Directory of Nursing Journals, vetted by their organisation,
and to make use of Jeffrey Beall's open-access list of predatory journals.[134]

Bioethicist Arthur Caplan has warned that predatory publishing, fabricated data, and academic
plagiarism erodes public confidence in the medical profession, devalues legitimate science, and
undermines public support for evidence-based policy.[135]

In 2015, Rick Anderson, associate dean in the J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah,
challenged the term itself: "what do we mean when we say 'predatory,' and is that term even still
useful?... This question has become relevant because of that common refrain heard among
Beall's critics: that he only examines one kind of predation—the kind that naturally crops up in the
context of author-pays OA." Anderson suggests that the term "predatory" be retired in the context
of scholarly publishing. "It's a nice, attention-grabbing word, but I'm not sure it's helpfully
descriptive... it generates more heat than light."[136] A 2017 article in

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suggests that a significant number of academics are "eager" to publish their work in these
journals, making the relationship more a "new and ugly symbiosis" than a case of scholars being
exploited by "predators".[8]

Similarly, a study published in January 2018 found that "Scholars in the developing world felt that
reputable Western journals might be prejudiced against them and sometimes felt more
comfortable publishing in journals from the developing world. Other scholars were unaware of
the reputation of the journals in which they published and would not have selected them had they
known. However, some scholars said they would still have published in the same journals if their
institution recognised them. The pressure to 'publish or perish' was another factor influencing
many scholars' decisions to publish in these fast-turnaround journals. In some cases,
researchers did not have adequate guidance and felt they lacked the knowledge of research to
submit to a more reputable journal."[11]

In May 2018, the University Grants Commission in India removed 4,305 dubious journals from a
list of publications used for evaluating academic performance.[137][138][139]

To further define and distinguish predatory journals, Leonhard Dobusch and Maximilian
Heimstädt in 2019 proposed a tripartite classification of Open Access journals with below-
average peer review quality.[140] Based on their procedures, there would be 1) "aspirant" 2) "junk"
and 3) "fake" journals. While aspirant journals are science-oriented despite their below-average
peer review (e.g. student-run journals), junk and fake journals are predominantly or exclusively
profit-oriented. Junk and fake Open Access journals have superficial or no peer review
procedures, despite their claims of being peer-reviewed.

In April 2019, 43 participants from 10 countries met in Ottawa, Canada to formulate a consensus
definition: “Predatory journals and publishers are entities that prioritize self-interest at the
expense of scholarship and are characterized by false or misleading information, deviation from
best editorial and publication practices, a lack of transparency, and/or the use of aggressive and
indiscriminate solicitation practices.” Adequacy of peer review was not included in the definition
because this factor was deemed too subjective to evaluate.[141] Critics of this definition argued
that excluding the quality of peer review from the definition "could strengthen rather than
weaken" predatory journals.[142]

In March 2022, the InterAcademy Partnership published a report,

, with a series of recommendations.[143] This study emphasized, that
predatory publishing practices is not a binary (good or bad) phenomenon, but rather a spectrum.
They proposed the following classification:

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a) journals, which mimic existing reputable journals;[144]

b) journals which papers from legitimate journals (see OMICS);
c) journals which their potential authors by "giving false or misleading information
about their publishing charges, the services they provide (like indexing, peer-review, or having
an impact factor), where the publisher is based, or the identity of the owner, editor or members
of the editorial board."
d) journals, which are characterised by poor cumulative criteria (such as
disregarding negative reviews of manuscripts and publishing articles outside the declared
journal's scope), without an apparent deceitful intent (see MDPI and Frontiers Media).

Some journals can be simultaneously classified into two or more categories.

See also

• List of scholarly publishing stings

• Author mill

• Conflicts of interest in academic publishing (covers publishers' COIs)

• Content farm

• Diploma mill

• Elsevier § Fake journals

• Essay mill

• Hijacked journal

• Journalology

• Mega journal

• Open-access journal

• Peer review failures

• Predatory conference

• Pseudo-scholarship

• Research Integrity Risk Index

• Center for Promoting Ideas

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Explanatory notes

a. Gina Kolata ( , 30 October 2017): "These publications often are called

predatory journals, on the assumption that well-meaning academics are duped into working
with them – tricked by flattering emails from the journals inviting them to submit a paper or
fooled by a name that sounded like a journal they knew.

"But it's increasingly clear that many academics know exactly what they're getting into,
which explains why these journals have proliferated despite wide criticism. The relationship
is less predator and prey, some experts say, than a new and ugly symbiosis."[8]

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Further reading

• Spears, Tom (14 June 2017). "Critic of 'predatory' publishing returns with scathing article" (ht
tps://[Link]/clip/41127874/critic_of_predatory_publishing_returns/) .
. p. A3. Retrieved 26 December 2019 – via [Link]. "Jeffrey Beall is back after
he went silent and website disappeared around January"

• Discussion document: Predatory Publishing (Report). Committee on Publication Ethics

(COPE). 1 November 2019. doi:10.24318/cope.2019.3.6 ([Link]
019.3.6) .

• InterAcademy Partnership (2022).

([Link] .
[Washington, DC]. ISBN 978-1-7330379-3-8. OCLC 1304485975 ([Link]
oclc/1304485975) .

External links

• Think. Check. Submit. ([Link] Scholia has a

profile for
• "Predatory journals: No definition, No defence ([Link] .
[Link]/articles/d41586-019-03759-y) . (2019).
Nature. "Leading scholars and publishers from ten countries have agreed [on] a definition of
predatory publishing that can protect scholarship."

• AMWA – EMWA – ISMPP Joint Position statement ([Link]

n-statements/joint-position-statement-on-predatory-publishing/)

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