The Latest Scholarly Articles
- West, & Bergstrom, C. T. (2021). Misinformation in and about science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS, 118(15), 1–.Predatory publishing from a broader perspective in a world where "Misinformation has reached crisis proportions." Discusses publication bias, citation misdirection, fake news, data and sciecne distortions and calls for an intervention.
- Krawczyk, & Kulczycki, E. (2021). How is open access accused of being predatory? The impact of Beall’s lists of predatory journals on academic publishing. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 47(2), 102271–.The aim of this paper is to investigate how predatory journals are characterized by authors who write about such journals. We emphasize the ways in which predatory journals have been conflated with—or distinguished from—open access journals. We created a list of relevant publications on predatory publishing using four databases: Web of Science, Scopus, Dimensions, and Microsoft Academic.
- Yeo-Teh, & Tang, B. L. (2021). Wilfully submitting to and publishing in predatory journals - a covert form of research misconduct? Biochemia Medica, 31(3), 030201–030402. https://doi.org/10.11613/BM.2021.030201Here, we argue that wilfully submitting one’s manuscript to a predatory journal may constitute an active act of avoidance of rigorous peer review of one’s work. If such is the intention, it would be a questionable research practice and could be considered an, albeit covert, form of scientific misconduct. If labelled as such, and with institutional and funding rules erected to discourage the practice, predatory publishing could be effectively put out of business through diminishing the consumer demand.
- Ng, & Haynes, R. B. (2021). “Evidence-based checklists” for identifying predatory journals have not been assessed for reliability or validity: An analysis and proposal for moving forward. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 138, 40–48.•In the present study, we identified evidence-based checklists (EBCs) to detect predatory journals (PJs) and critically examined each item in each EBC identified.•We identified a total of four EBCs and compared them against a published methods guideline for scale development outlined in nine steps and found that no checklist even fully completed step one.•
- Jan, & Gul, S. (2021). The Baffling Disappearance of Beall’s Blog (www.scholarlyoa.com):Reasons Revealed. Library Philosophy and Practice, 2021, 1–11.For several years since the publishing of the Beall's list, there has been increasing concerns about the criteria that Beall used to develop his lists, with some scholars dismissing his lists as inaccurate, misleading and dangerous to academics. The paper is a discourse on the 56 characteristics list by Beall as guidelines for Determining Predatory Open-Access Publishers and journals with a focusing on the factors which can be considered as Irrational Factors for labeling a journal as predatory.
- Mertkan, Onurkan Aliusta, G., & Suphi, N. (2021). Knowledge production on predatory publishing: A systematic review. Learned Publishing, 34(3), 407–413.The systematic review of the research reported in this paper was conducted within the context of efforts to understand and combat predatory publishing, a new but fast-growing area of research. It synthesizes the trends observed in knowledge production in predatory publishing, with a particular focus on the volume and distribution over time within different journals. It also looks at the composition of the predatory publishing literature in terms of the type of study, methods, topics, field of study, and contexts where research was conducted.
- Aromataris, & Stern, C. (2020). Supporting a definition of predatory publishing. BMC Medicine, 18(1), 125–125.[...] Despite their independent development, across a diverse range of publication sources and disciplines (including for example nursing, emergency medicine, psychiatry), the majority of checklists directed the user to the same details for assessment of the periodical; with over 75% of the checklists including questions related to journal business operations, editorial and peer review processes and practices, and/or the manner of communication between the journal/publisher and the authors, editors and readers.
- Murphy, J. (2019). Predatory Publishing and the Response from the Scholarly Community. Serials Review, 45(1-2), 73–78.Predatory journals are multiplying rapidly, but awareness is increasing in the scholarly community. Publishers, open access advocates, and researchers are exploring new ways to fight back. This column examines different ways members of the research community have chosen to address the problem of fraudulent publishing.
- Perlin, Imasato, T., & Borenstein, D. (2018). Is predatory publishing a real threat? Evidence from a large database study. Scientometrics, 116(1), 255–273.Using a database of potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access journals, the objective of this research is to study the penetration of predatory publications in the Brazilian academic system and the profile of authors in a cross-section empirical study
Selected Scholarly Articles
Babor, T., & Ward, J. (2018). Caveat Emptor: Predatory Publishers, Rogue Journals, and the Potential Corruption of Addiction Science. Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 79(4), 509–513.
Beall, J. (2013). Predatory publishing is just one of the consequences of gold open access. Learned Publishing, 26(2), 79-84.
Beall, J. (2016). Dangerous predatory publishers threaten medical research. Journal of Korean Medical Science, 31(10), 1511-1513.
Beall, J. (2016). Best practices for scholarly authors in the age of predatory journals. The Annals of The Royal College of Surgeons of England, 98(2), 77-79.
Beall, J. (2017). What I learned from predatory publishers. Biochemia Medica, 27(2), 273-278.
Bell, K. (2017). Predatory’Open Access journals as parody: Exposing the limitations of ‘legitimate’academic publishing. Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society, 15(2), 651-662.
Berger, M. (2017). Everything you ever wanted to know about predatory publishing but were afraid to ask. In ACRL 2017, Baltimore, Maryland, March 22 - 25, 2017. [Conference paper]
Bohannon, J. (2013). Who’s afraid of peer review. Science, 342(6154).
Bowman, J.D. (2014) Predatory publishing, questionable peer review, and fraudulent conferences, Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 78(10): Article 176.
Buschman, J. (2020). A Political Sociology of the Beall’s List Affair. The Library Quarterly (Chicago), 90(3), 298–313.
Clark, J., & Smith, R. (2015). Firm action needed on predatory journals. BMJ. 350:h210.
Eve, M. P., & Priego, E. (2017). Who is actually harmed by Predatory Publishers? Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society, 15(2), 755-770.
Harvey, H. B., & Weinstein, D. F. (2017). Predatory publishing: an emerging threat to the medical literature. Academic Medicine, 92(2), 150-151.
Krawczyk, F., & Kulczycki, E. (2020). How is open access accused of being predatory? The impact of Beall’s lists of predatory journals on academic publishing. The Journal of Academic Librarianship. Available online, November 2020.
Laine C, Winker MA. (February 15, 2017). Identifying Predatory or Pseudo-Journals. World Association of Medical Editors.
Manca, A., Martinez, G., Cugusi, L., Dragone, D., Mercuro, G., & Deriu, F. (2017). Predatory open access in rehabilitation. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 98(5), 1051-1056.
Moher, D., & Srivastava, A. (2015). You are invited to submit…. BMC Medicine, 13(1), 180.
Shamseer, L., Moher, D., Maduekwe, O., Turner, L., Barbour, V., Burch, R., . . . Shea, B. J. (2017). Potential predatory and legitimate biomedical journals: can you tell the difference? A cross - sectional comparison. BMC Medicine, 15(1), 28.
Shen, C., & Björk, B. C. (2015). ‘Predatory’ open access: a longitudinal study of article volumes and market characteristics. BMC Medicine, 13(1), 230.
Xia, J., Harmon, J. L., Connolly, K. G., Donnelly, R. M., Anderson, M. R., & Howard, H. A. (2015). Who publishes in “predatory” journals?. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 66(7), 1406-1417.
Predatory Publishers 2011-2016
This graph shows an explosion in the number of so-called predatory publishers and journals in the past five years.
Source: Matthews, D. (2016). Journals and publishers setting sights on the unwary. Times Higher Education.