Predatory publishers' latest scam: bootlegged and rebranded papers

Rebranding of Predatory Journals and Conferences: Understanding Its Implication and Prevention Strategy

Academic conference participation and publications serve as a litmus test to evaluate researchers irrespective of their scientific discipline. Predatory or fake conferences and journals exploit this issue and rebrand themselves through multiple methods. This paper serves to introduce rebranding as one of the features adopted by predatory journals and conferences and formulate some important measures that could be taken by academic libraries, researchers, and publishers to address this issue. We found that rebranding serves as an efficient measure to evade legal implications. However, empirical longitudinal studies addressing the issue are absent. We have explained rebranding, multiple ways of rebranding, issues surrounding predatory publishing, and the role of academic libraries and provided a five-point prevention strategy to protect researchers from academic malpractices. Dedicated tools, scientific prowess, and vigilance of academic libraries and researchers can safeguard the scientific community. Creating awareness, increasing transparency of available databases, and the support of academic libraries and publishing houses along with global support will serve as effective measures to tackle predatory malpractices.

Predatory publishing in Scopus: Evidence on cross-country differences

Predatory publishing represents a major challenge to scholarly communication. This paper maps the infiltration of journals suspected of predatory practices into the citation database Scopus and examines cross-country differences in the propensity of scholars to publish in such journals. Using the names of “potential, possible, or probable” predatory journals and publishers on Beall’s lists, we derived the ISSNs of 3,293 journals from Ulrichsweb and searched Scopus with them. A total of 324 of journals that appear in both Beall’s lists and Scopus, with 164,000 articles published during 2015–2017 were identified. Analysis of data for 172 countries in four fields of research indicates that there is a remarkable heterogeneity. In the most affected countries, including Kazakhstan and Indonesia, around 17% of articles were published in the suspected predatory journals, while some other countries have no articles in this category whatsoever. Countries with large research sectors at the medium level of economic development, especially in Asia and North Africa, tend to be most susceptible to predatory publishing. Policy makers and stakeholders in these and other developing countries need to pay more attention to the quality of research evaluation.

Questionable conferences and presenters from top-ranked universities

This article aims to investigate the structures of 935 conferences organised by OMICS and 296 conferences organised by WASET from 2015 through 2017. These conferences are characterised in existing literature as so-called predatory or questionable conferences that provide low-quality academic meetings. We analyse 40,224 presenters, focusing on top-ranked institutions according to three global university ranking systems (Academic Ranking of World Universities, Times Higher Education World University Rankings, and QS World University Rankings). Our analysis shows that participants in OMICS events were primarily researchers from the United States, India, the United Kingdom, and China. WASET attracted more researchers from Turkey, India, and South Korea. We found that 11.0% of OMICS and 5.7% of WASET presenters were affiliated with institutions ranked in the top 100 in one of the three aforementioned rankings. We also found that both companies mostly organised conferences in cities that were top tourist destinations.

Individual integrity and public morality in scientific publishing

Science and science reporting are under threat. Knowingly or not, researchers and clinicians are part of this debacle. This is not due so much to the notorious replication crisis, as to our acceptance of lowering common morality for personal gains, including the widespread, deprecable phenomenon of predatory publishing. Rather than fiercefully countering this loathsome practice, academics are accepting, often supporting a masquerade solution: paying several thousand dollars to publish for all their own papers. This new policy will create a disparity across richer and poorer disciplines; will result in concentrating even more in the hands of large, rich, Western institutions, also penalising younger researchers; will kill observational studies and exploratory research; and will make disseminating science depending more on finances than on quality. This article calls for the full awareness of the academic community on the risks of the current situation in scientific publishing.

Patient-level costing analysis of paediatric short bowel syndrome care in a specialist tertiary centre

PURPOSE

To undertake a pilot study estimating patient-level costs of care for paediatric short bowel syndrome (SBS) from the healthcare provider perspective.

METHODS

A pilot group of patients with anatomical SBS was selected at a single specialist tertiary centre in the United Kingdom. The Patient Level Information and Costing System (PLICS) was used to extract costing data for all hospital-based activities related to SBS, from the implementation of PLICS in 2016 to April 2021. Patient-specific and pooled data were reported descriptively in per patient-year terms.

RESULTS

Five patients had full PLICS data available for the 5-year study period and 2 patients had 4 years of data. The median cost for hospital care of SBS was £52,834 per patient-year (range £1804-£331,489). The key cost drivers were inpatient beds, pharmacy, and staffing costs, which made up > 60% of annual costs. In the first 3 years following index admission (n = 2), there was a steady decline in the annual cost of care to a level comparable with patients with established SBS.

CONCLUSION

Patient-level cost of care analysis for SBS is feasible using PLICS. Hospital-related costs vary widely between and within individual patients over time. Key drivers of cost are related to complications of SBS.