Manuscript Submission Invitations from 'Predatory Journals': What Should Authors Do?

A Toolkit for Detecting Fallacious Calls for Papers from Potential Predatory Journals

Purpose

Flattering emails are crucial in tempting authors to submit papers to predatory journals. Although there is ample literature regarding the questionable practices of predatory journals, the nature and detection of spam emails need more attention. Current research provides insight into fallacious calls for papers from potential predatory journals and develops a toolkit in this regard.

Methods

In this study, we analyzed three datasets of calls for papers from potential predatory journals and legitimate journals using a text mining approach and R programming language.

Results

Overall, most potential predatory journals use similar language and templates in their calls for papers. Importantly, these journals praise themselves in glorious terms involving positive words that may be rarely seen in emails from legitimate journals. Based on these findings, we developed a lexicon for detecting unsolicited calls for papers from potential predatory journals.

Conclusion

We conclude that calls for papers from potential predatory journals and legitimate journals are different, and it can help to distinguish them. By providing an educational plan and easily usable tools, we can deal with predatory journals better than previously.

Effect of an educational intervention on the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of healthcare workers at King Hussein Cancer Center towards predatory publishers

AIMS

We explored the effect of an educational intervention on the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of healthcare workers (HCWs) towards predatory publishing.

METHODS

A retrospective pre-post quasi experimental design was implemented on HCWs within King Hussein Cancer Center (KHCC). Following a 60-min educational lecture, a self-administered questionnaire was completed by participants. Pre- and post-intervention scores for familiarity, knowledge, practices, and attitudes were compared using the paired sample t-test. Multivariate linear regression was used to identify predictors of mean differences (MD) of knowledge scores.

RESULTS

A total of 121 respondents completed the questionnaire. The majority of participants demonstrated underwhelming awareness of predatory publishing and average levels of knowledge of their characteristics. Furthermore, respondents did not take the necessary precautions to avoid predatory publishers. The intervention (i.e. the educational lecture) improved familiarity (MD: 13.4; 95%CI: 12.4 - 14.4; p-value < .001), knowledge of predatory journal's characteristics (MD: 12.9; 95%CI: 11.1 - 14.8; p-value < .001), awareness and perceived compliance to preventive measures (MD: 7.7; 95%CI: 6.7 - 8.6; p-value < .001), and positively influenced attitudes towards open access and safe publishing (MD: 0.8; 95%CI: 0.2 - 1.5; p-value = 0.012). Females had significantly lower familiarity scores (p-value = 0.002). Moreover, those who had published in open access journals, received at least one predatory e-mail, or had more than 5 published original articles had significantly higher familiarity and knowledge scores (all p-value < 0.001).

CONCLUSIONS

An educational lecture proved effective in improving awareness of KHCC's HCW's to predatory publishers. Nonetheless, the mediocrity of pre-intervention scores raises concerns on effectiveness of the predatory covert practices.

Predatory journals: The rise of worthless biomedical science

In today's world when biomedical science is experiencing continuous threats from various sources, publication of research articles in predatory journals has created a major havoc. These predatory journals are publishing worthless biomedical science which will haunt genuine researchers and keen readers of authentic biomedical journals for several decades. Hence, researchers of various disciplines and academic experience should be continuously made aware of these predatory publishers and potential ways to recognize them. The main aim of this article is to discuss the issues related to predatory publishing, techniques and strategies used by these publishers to prey young inexperienced researchers, and disadvantages of publishing in predatory journals.

Predatory journals: Do not judge journals by their Editorial Board Members

Objective: Given that often the quality of journals is based on its editors, the objective of this study was to describe quantitatively the profiles of members of editorial boards (MEBs) of presumed predatory journals. Methods: The following information was retrieved from 1015 editors taken from journals listed in Beall's list: country, university, position, and degree. The Scopus website was used to identify the number of citations, documents, and h-index. Results: Presumed open access predatory journals are including all types of profiles as their MEBs, which include fake and unqualified editors, but mostly very high-qualified scientists who are professors, medical doctors and/or had a PhD. MEBs were located in 74 different countries, most had an affiliation in the United States of America (USA) (44.4%). The median of publications per editor was 43, number of citations 664 and h-index 14. Conclusions: The results dispute the common belief that it is possible to identify predatory journals by checking their editorial boards. Scientists should not rely on the editors to determine if a journal is predatory. If an author has doubt, the editors should be contacted.

Improving Scientific Writing Skills and Publishing Capacity by Developing University-Based Editing System and Writing Programs

Scholarly article writing and publishing in international peer-reviewed journals can become an overwhelming task for many medical, nursing, and healthcare professionals in a university setting, especially in countries whose native language is not English. To help improve their scientific writing skills and publishing capacity, a university-based editing system and writing programs can be developed as educational platforms. These are delivered by a team of specialist editors composed of tenured faculty members who have a strong medical background and extensive experience in teaching courses on medical research, editing, writing, and publishing. For the editing system, the specialist editors provide comprehensive editing, personalized consultation, full editorial support after peer review, guidance with online submissions/resubmissions, and detailed editorial review at different stages of the manuscript writing. In addition, the specialist editors can develop writing programs such as medical writing and editing internships, academic courses in medical writing or research study designs and reporting standards, special interactive lectures and sessions on predatory publishing, seminars on updated editorial guidance of global editorial associations, academic visits on medical writing and editing, medical writing mentoring program, networking programs in scholarly communication, and publication resources in medical writing and scholarly publishing. These editing system and writing programs can serve as integrated platforms for improving scientific writing skills and publishing capacity by providing continuing education in medical writing, editing, publishing, and publication ethics.

Problems and challenges of predatory journals

The companies publishing predatory journals are an emerging problem in the area of scientific literature as they only seek to drain money from authors without providing any customer service for the authors or their readership. These predatory journals try to attract new submissions by aggressive email advertising and high acceptance rates. But in turn, they do not provide proper peer review, and therefore, the scientific quality of submitted articles is questionable. This is important because more and more people, including patients, are reading such journals and rely on the information they provide. Consequently, predatory journals are a serious threat to the integrity of medical science, and it is crucial for scientists, physicians and even patients to be aware of this problem. In this review, we briefly summarize the history of the open access movement, as well as the rise of and roles played by predatory journals. In conclusion, young and inexperienced authors publishing in a predatory journal must be aware of the damage of their reputation, of inadequate peer review processes and that unprofitable journals might get closed and all published articles in that journal might be lost.

WASP (Write a Scientific Paper): Open access unsolicited emails for scholarly work - Young and senior researchers perspectives

The increasing demand on academics and researchers to publish has led to the development of fake journals (also known as predatory journals). Such journals lack peer review and precipitate unfair criticism toward legitimate open access journals. Predatory journals tend to bombard a researcher's mailbox on a daily basis, inviting authors to submit a review/manuscript/opinion/short case to their journal while promising expedited publication - against a fee. This study assessed the unsolicited emails received over the period of November 2017 by a young and by a senior researcher. The young researcher received a substantially higher amount of emails (n = 101) compared to the senior researcher (n = 23). The article processing costs for solicited journals received, ranged between $49 and $3019. These journals are almost all only indexed in Google Scholar and do not display any meaningful journal metrics. Furthermore, the majority of the unsolicited emails were not relevant to the researcher's field of study. Therefore authors and readers alike should evaluate emails received with regard to journal legitimacy prior to submission of work to possibly predatory journals.

Influence of Internet and Social Media in the Promotion of Alternative Oncology, Cancer Quackery, and the Predatory Publishing Phenomenon

In the last decade, electronic media has irrupted physician's clinical practice. Patients increasingly use Internet and social media to obtain enormous amounts of unsupervised data about cancer. Blogs, social networking sites, online support groups and forums are useful channels for medical education and experience sharing but also perfect environments for misinformation, quackery, violation of privacy and lack of professionalism. The widespread availability of such electronic resources allows some followers of the alternative oncology to spread useless irrational and controversial remedies for cancer, like false medicaments, miraculous diets, electronic devices, and even psychic therapies, as did charlatans in the past, providing false expectations about cancer treatments. Moreover, so-called predatory journals have introduced confusion and malpractice within the academic biomedical publishing system. This is a rising editorial phenomenon affecting all fields of biomedicine, including oncology that jeopardizes the quality of scientific contribution and damages the image of open access publication.

How can emergency physicians protect their work in the era of pseudo publishing?

Recently scientists have been targets of pseudo journals (fake, hijacked or predatory journals). These journals provide a low barrier to publication and quick publication times compared to high quality journals and exploit the pay-to-publish system in order to charge publication fees but they provide no formal peer-review. We aim to increase awareness among emergency physicians about pseudo journals. Trying to list all of fake, hijacked or predatory journals is not the solution because new journals are launched almost everyday and the fast proliferation of journals makes it difficult to identify and list all of them. Only an understanding of the practices and markers of legitimate and predatory publishers will allow the researcher to keep pace with danger because fraud is an ever-changing field. In this review we offer basic information (our top list of strategies and potential red flags) to recognize these journals to avoid submission and suggest some solutions if a paper has already been submitted or published in these journals.

Predatory journals: una amenaza emergente para autores y editores de publicaciones biomédicas

So-called predatory publishing is a new and rising phenomenon presenting as an intellectual fraud that jeopardises the quality of scientific contribution, compromises the activity of authors, reviewers and editors of legitimate journals, damages the image of open access publications and is a very profitable business. In this paper, we review the concept and relevance of predatory journals and the characteristics that differentiate them from legitimate publications. Neurosurgical and general neuroscience journals are not immune to this problem. Academic institutions and ethics committees have a duty to raise awareness of this phenomenon and provide information and support to authors and the whole scientific community to avoid its propagation and potential control of biomedical publishing.