Recognise and avoid predatory journals
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Whats is a predatory journal / publisher ?
With the advent of Open Access and the author-pays model (the author pays to make his work available, rather than the reader paying a subscription), unscrupulous publishers have flourished, taking advantage of the system to make a profit. We call them predatory publishers, predatory magazines, pseudo-reviews and so on. Their sole objective is profit.
Their main characteristics are as follows:
- They often canvass authors or reviewers by e-mail
- They do not provide any transparency about their editorial service (often there is none)
- They do not guarantee an honest scientific process: reviewing is either absent or of poor quality. The reviewing process is often improbable (a few days) when they announce it.
- They use false metrics, false persistent identifiers and do not provide DOIs
- They publish fake articles or under fake authors' names
- Their website is dubious or copies those of recognised journals
- They may ask for astronomical or very low APCs
- They mention a false Impact Factor.
- Unprofessional contact email address
- Promise rapid publication
The risk of publishing with them is, of course, not only to scientific integrity, given the lack of quality control of what they publish, but also to your reputation as a researcher or your institution.
Who to avoid them ?
It exist ready-made lists of predatory publishers or journals, but as these practices are constantly evolving, it is preferable to use alerting criteria, online tools and above all to combine all this information to make the right decision (have a spectral approach).
Here are a few tools/criteria to check when in doubt:
Consult lists of criteria or tools to be taken into account and which can alert you to certain practices
Consult white lists :
- Is the journal recorded on the portail ISSN (International Standard Serial Number Portal)
- Is it findable on known databases : Web of science, Scopus, PubMed
- MIAR (Information Matrix for the analysis of Journals,
- DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals),
- COPE (Commitee on Publication Ethics),
- OASPA (Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association)
Consult blacks lists :
- Cabells
- Beall's list : pay attention : it's not updated by Bells himself, we don't know who's behind it !
Ask your peers if they know the journal of members of it's edition comitee
Consult the website
And pay attention to anything that might be suspicious : a name too close to one known journal, a suspicious email adress, the lack of information contact, the mention of an Impact factor (even though the journal is not recorded elsewhere) suspicious images, etc.
To conclude : confront the sources, don't see in black or white, adopt a spectral approach to identify predatory behaviours.
Adapted from The Interacademy Partnership (IAP 2022). Combatting predatory Academic Journals and Conferences https://www.interacademies.org/publication/predatory-practices-report-English