Predatory Publishers

Apivenenum magnus (Oak 1995) is a well-known anthophile native to the Kanto region of Japan. It is most notable for its large size, reaching one meter in length and weighing nearly thirty kilograms as a full-grown adult. Like many anthophiles, it lives in groups and will violently defend their nests from predators, but its large size makes it a public health concern. Here we report two confirmed sightings on the island of Maui in the Hawaiian Island chain, Hawaii, U.S.A. In the first, a young animal trainer walking through the jungle with his pet mouse was attacked by a group of A. magnus. He escaped along with his unconscious mouse, which suffered injuries that are only consistent with A. magnus attacks. In the second sighting, a pair of petty thieves was watching a pet show from a distance with their pet cat when they inadvertently stumbled across an A. magnus nest, all requiring hospitalization. It is currently unknown if A. magnus will be able to establish a permanent population on Maui, or how it arrived, with international shipping containers a possibility. Animal control authorities have been alerted to the danger and are currently searching for A. magnus nests.

The author considers typical ways of simulating the scientific process, leading to an increase in the quantitative parameters of reports, but not contributing to an increase in scientific knowledge (artificial increase in publication activity; defense of frankly weak qualifying works, including dissertations; imitation pseudoscientific conferences; “omnivorous” paid journals; blurring the lines between genres of work in pursuit of funding). The proliferation of simulation mechanisms that do not contradict normative documents testifies to the loss of the qualitative criteria necessary for the self-preservation of science. The use of regulatory instruments provided for by the current bureaucratic acts is also formal, and often overtly simulated. In fact, many of the identified “challenges” are not “local”, inherent exclusively to Russian science. In addition, as the practice of recent years shows, the problems and consequences of the simulation of scientific work are well understood by domestic scientists who are trying to draw attention to anomalies and develop mechanisms to counter their manifestations, which indicates the existence of an “initiative from below”. The author believes that the activity of the professional community of art historians and critics can become a model in restoring regulatory mechanisms for the humanities. The criteria for the quality of scientific work and traditions of criticism that have survived in this community will not replace the imposed quantitative parameters, but can reduce the reputation losses of the Russian humanitarian science.

Peertechz Publications is an online publisher for Open Access scientific research journals. The organization has more than 100 journals catering the need of researchers in science, health, pharmaceuticals, engineering and technology. All the journals are Open Access and follow stringent double-blinded peer-review process.

Following World War II, Japan has seen a large increase in tourist arrivals from abroad, with Chinese tourists becoming especially prominent in recent years. Within the last twenty-five years, a new reason for visiting has appeared in Japanese villages and cities: Monstrasinu Centers. Monstrasinu have become popular among young people for many reason, including companionship, the five categories of Monstrasinu contests, practical purposes (furniture moving, lighthouse beacons, and field plowing), and intense physical contests which pit the Monstrasinu of two owners against each other. These fights do not result in permanent injuries, but do generally result in several Monstrasinu losing consciousness by the end of the fight. Monstrasinu Centers are present in many villages and cities in Japan (one per city) and offer free medical care to all Monstrasinu, which is mostly limited to rousing injured Monstrasinu out of unconsciousness after a fight. While this can be done with ReviveTM, it is expensive (costing about 1,500 yen per dose) and is not available to all Monstrasinu owners, making Monstrasinu Centers an affordable opportunity for American Monstrasinu owners, who will travel to Japan with their injured Monstrasinu to restore them to full health. Monstrasinu Centers are owned and operated exclusively by the Joy family, which has led to conflicts between the family and some of the communities the Monstrasinu Centers operate in.

As a fundamentally interdisciplinary sector of study, oceanography spans not only the physical and chemical attributes of large saline aquatic environments, but also overlaps with biological considerations of oceanic flora and fauna, and incorporates a wide variety of sub-topics, from orbital wave dynamics, to plate tectonics, to acoustic oceanography. As a major component of the planetary surface, oceans therefore additionally form a significant component of Earth Science study, particularly in an era of ongoing and accelerating climate change.
However, one interdisciplinary intersection which has largely been hitherto underexplored is that of oceanography’s overlap with the speculative arts, a subset which might be termed speculative oceanography. This paper intends to address this gap in research by collating and reprising existing speculative oceanography, in order to identify and codify the broad areas of interest and future study which arise therefrom. One such area identified, which explores the oceanographic properties of non-terrestrial large aquatic bodies, is herein termed exo-oceanography, for example. The paper concludes with a call for greater interdisciplinary co-operation between oceanographic researchers and speculation methodologies.

We study to what extent scholarly communication of social science and humanities (SSH) scholars within Flanders resides in outlets of questionable quality. Since 2013 ECOOM-UAntwerp has organised comparisons of the annual lists of journals submitted to VABB-SHW with Beall’s list(s) of the corresponding year, and, as of 2015, also with DOAJ (Rahman, Dexters, and Engels 2014; Rahman and Engels 2015; Rahman, Guns, and Engels 2015; Sīle, Guns, and Engels 2017).

This report results from a comparison of the list of journals submitted to the Authoritative Panel (abbreviated here as AP) of the VABB-SHW (Vlaams Academisch Bibliografisch Bestand voor de Sociale en Humane Wetenschappen). ECOOM-Antwerp submitted this list of journals to the AP in July 2017 (publications from years 2007-2016) and compared it with, firstly, Cabells Journal Blacklist and, secondly, the list of journals indexed in DOAJ.

As publishing demands increase, so does the availability of open access predatory publishing options masquerading as reputable peer-review outlets. This article cautions against the broader consequences of predatory publishing and suggests means to control their influence.

This report gives the results of the comparison of Beall’s list of predatory open access journals with the VABB-SHW lists of journals – including all journals that are being or have been indexed in the Web of Science – as of July 2013. The report may facilitate the GP’s decision making. More generally, the report may raise awareness on the prevalence of predatory open access publishing in the social sciences and humanities in Flanders. The number of articles in predatory open access journals submitted to ECOOM-UAntwerpen by the universities in view of inclusion in the VABB-SHW is increasing in recent years. Whereas no publications in predatory open access journals appeared in 2000-2002, the yearly number remained below 5 in the period 2003-2009. In 2010 the number rose to 5, and then jumped to 15 in 2011 and 24 in 2012. This illustrates that in Flanders too predatory open access publishing is gaining ground. Nonetheless, the percentage of publications in predatory open access journals remains very small thus far (0.20%, the largest proportion for any year thus far, in 2012).

Are you looking for some good journals to publish your data? Then this is the correct time to read my article. I am writing this with the hope of inhibiting you from publishing your data in predatory and fake journals.
These are the following criteria you should know before submitting your manuscript to a journal:

There has been a growing concern about fraud peer review articles that have been published in some journals in favor of their authors' affiliation, which have been discussed extensively by some researchers. This research paper introduces another a new challenge in academic world concerning journals’ editors who look at authors' affiliations rather than papers' contents. In this short paper, we will introduce this alarming problem and do an experimental test by submitting computer generated papers to some journals and finally present the results of our experiment. The paper is an expression of our concern about providing for maximum high ethics in and quality of publication policy of modern scientific journals.

Academics and scholars need to publish their research results. In addition, they are required to publish scientific papers to prove their research commitment and to achieve certain academic titles in higher education institutions. Globally, there are many scientific journals of well-known publishing houses/universities, which offer opportunities to publish scientific work. One of the recent topics in academic circles is the increasing number of invitations to publish articles via quick procedures, without going through the adequate review process. This phenomenon is threatening academic integrity, as these publishers/journals aim at financial benefits and not contributing to scientific development and progress. There is a gap in the knowledge of the scientific researchers regarding the journal selection to publish their work. Some of them are still unintentionally publishing in such journals, mainly as a lack of information about them. The main purpose of this study is awareness-raising, warning, and guidance of scientific researchers, particularly young researchers by providing information on how to avoid submitting manuscripts in these journals. To achieve this, we have consulted the recent literature and practices of different countries, summarized the most used tools/methods to identify predatory publishers and journals, and lastly, we have developed a guiding algorithm for evaluating them.

The rapid expansion of journal literature, combined with increasing pressure to reduce the cost of access, has led to changes in the ways that scholarly publications are produced, distributed, and financed. Predatory practices in scholarly publishing are forms of corruption that have been made possible by these changes to the system of scholarly communication. As costs of scholarly publishing are increasingly shifted to authors and national funding agencies, it may be increasingly difficult to distinguish between predatory practices and standard procedures in scholarly journal publishing.

The current report presents the results of this monitoring exercise in view of VABB-SHW version VI, which will contain publications from the time period 2005–2014. This report provides a detailed comparison of (1) the journals published by publishers listed on Beall’s list of POA publishers and the journals on Beall’s list of stand-alone journals as of 5 November 2015 with (2) the VABB-SHW list of journals as submitted to the GP in July 2015. Furthermore, we also provide details on each potentially predatory journal regarding its inclusion in Web of Science (WoS) and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and we list the publishers that are, according to Beall’s list, not to be considered predatory open access anymore. This report is intended to facilitate the GP’s decision making. More generally, the report may raise awareness on the prevalence of predatory open access publishing in the social sciences and humanities in Flanders.A more relaxed approach might consist of taking the whitelisting of a journal in DOAJ as evidence of peer review and hence classify these journals as peer reviewed. However, this approach would raise the question on how the status of journals in other systems (e.g. Italian ANVUR, ERIH) will be handled.

The current report presents the results of this monitoring exercise. This report gives the result of the comparison of (1) the journals published by publishers listed on Beall’s list of predatory open access publishers and the journals listed on Beall’s list of standalone journals as of 6 November 2014 and (2) the VABB-SHW list of journals as submitted to the GP as of July 2014. This report is intended to facilitate the GP’s decision-making. More generally, the report may raise awareness on the prevalence of predatory open access publishing in the social sciences and humanities in Flanders, The results presented in this ad hoc report make clear that authors affiliated to universities in Flanders may have been misled by or may have resorted to predatory open access publishing at least 138 times in the period 2000-2013. In addition 49 articles that appeared with Hindawi Publishing Corporation were identified.

In this article we discuss the five yearly screenings for publications in questionable journals which have been carried out in the context of the performance-based research funding model in Flanders, Belgium. The Flemish funding model expanded from 2010 onwards, with a comprehensive bibliographic database for research output in the social sciences and humanities. Along with an overview of the procedures followed during the screenings for articles in questionable journals submitted for inclusion in this database, we present a biblio-graphic analysis of the publications identified. First, we show how the yearly number of publications in questionable journals has evolved over the period 2003-2016. Second, we present a disciplinary classification of the identified journals. In the third part of the results section, three authorship characteristics are discussed: multi-authorship, the seniority-or experience level-of authors in general and of the first author in particular, and the relation of the disciplinary scope of the journal (cognitive classification) with the departmental affiliation of the authors (organizational classification). Our results regarding yearly rates of publications in questionable journals indicate that awareness of the risks of questionable journals does not lead to a turn away from open access in general. The number of publications in open access journals rises every year, while the number of publications in questionable journals decreases from 2012 onwards. We find further that both early career and more senior researchers publish in questionable journals. We show that the average proportion of senior authors contributing to publications in questionable journals is somewhat higher than that for publications in open access journals. In addition, this paper yields insight into the extent to which publications in questionable journals pose a threat to the public and political legitimacy of a performance-based research funding system of a western European region. We include concrete suggestions for those tasked with maintaining bibliographic databases and screening for publications in questionable journals.

Predatory open access (OA) journals can be defined as non-indexed journals that exploit the gold OA model for profit, often spamming academics with questionable e-mails promising rapid OA publication for a fee. In aquaculture—a rapidly growing and highly scrutinized field—the issue of such journals remains undocumented. We employed a quantitative approach to determine whether attributes of scientific quality and rigor differed between OA aquaculture journals not indexed in reputable databases and well-established, indexed journals. Using a Google search, we identified several non-indexed OA journals, gathered data on attributes of these journals and articles therein, and compared these data to well-established aquaculture journals indexed in quality-controlled bibliometric databases. We then used these data to determine if non-indexed journals were likely predatory OA journals and if they pose a potential threat to aquaculture research. On average, non-indexed OA journals published significantly fewer papers per year, had cheaper fees, and were more recently established than indexed journals. Articles in non-indexed journals were, on average, shorter, had fewer authors and references, and spent significantly less time in peer review than their indexed counterparts; the proportion of articles employing rigorous statistical analyses was also lower for non-indexed journals. Additionally, articles in non-indexed journals were more likely to be published by scientists from developing nations. Worryingly, non-indexed journals were more likely to be found using a Google search, and their articles superficially resembled those in indexed journals. These results suggest that the non-indexed aquaculture journals identified herein are likely predatory OA journals and pose a threat to aquaculture research and the public education and perception of aquaculture. Several points of reference from this study, in combination, may help scientists and the public more easily identify these possibly predatory journals, as these journals were typically established after 2010, publishing <20 papers per year, had fees <$1,000, and published articles <80 days after submission. Subsequently checking reputable and quality-controlled databases such as the Directory of Open Access Journals, Web of Science, Scopus, and Thompson Reuters can aid in confirming the legitimacy of non-indexed OA journals and can facilitate avoidance of predatory OA aquaculture journals.

a US librarian, coined the term "predatory publishing" specifically to describe a movement or phenomenon of open access (OA) journals and publishers that he and others believed displayed exploitative and unscholarly principles. Using a blog to transmit those ideas, and profiling specific cases using blacklists, one of the most polemic aspects of Beall's blog was its tendency to attract and incite academic radicalism. Beall targeted both publishers and standalone journals, but how he precisely determined that an OA journal or a publisher was predatory was in many cases an ambiguity. Beall's deficient and highly subjective criteria, as well as those blacklists' incapacity to clearly distinguish low quality OA publishers from predatory ones, may have negatively impacted the operations of several Beall-blacklisted OA journals and publishers. Freedom of speech that embraces prejudice, via Beall's blog, and the establishment of "predatory" blacklists, are enhanced discriminatory ideologies that continue to be carried downstream from Beall to and by other like-minded individuals and groups who proliferate academic divisiveness and may also be formalizing and institutionalizing a culture of discriminative philosophies by cloning Beall's blacklists and encouraging their continued use.

Some of you reached out to me with regard to why I retracted two articles that appeared briefly here at researchgate.net. It became apparent that based on the evidence I had collected, Mgbakọigba: Journal of African Studies was engaging in predatory practices, fleecing desperate researchers looking for an outlet for publication without peer review for the going price of ₦20,000 (about $50 per paper) to be paid into the personal bank account of the Editor-in-Chief there, one Professor Okechukwu Nwafor.
This is the email that we sent to AJOL, where Mgbakọigba: Journal of African Studies is hosted requesting retraction

On 25 August 2016, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued OMICS Group Inc., iMedPub LLC, Conference Series LLC, and Srinubabu Gedela, all affiliated with open access mega-publisher OMICS International, for deception in their solicitation of journal articles and advertising of conferences. The ongoing lawsuit seeks to stop OMICS’s deceptive practices and disgorge US $50.5 million in ill-gotten gains. OMICS has in turn claimed over $2.1 billion for harm caused by the lawsuit to its business and employees. This article describes the main arguments, counter-arguments, and court decisions in the 5920 pages of pleadings, exhibits, and orders that have been filed through 14 October 2018. The article then evaluates the case to formulate key take-aways for publishers, editors, academics, and universities. Depending on its ultimate outcome, the case against OMICS may be a turning point in the practices of questionable open access online publishers, making this interim case assessment pert...

The article gives legal analysis of predatory scientometrics, defined as unfair business practice, pretending to use methods of scientometrics (measuring science) with intention to defame scholarly publishers, individual publications, authors and academic institutions, to obtain in such unfair way privileged position and unjust enrichment. It is shown that monopolization of scientific information market with predatory scientometrics threatens academic autonomy of scholarly publishing, individual freedom to share scientific researches and ideas. Strategies for legal protection of predatory scientometrics victims are proposed, such as clarify legal relations, legal action against direct insults and abusive regulations, expose damage and hypocrisy of scientometric monopolies, and autonomous scientometric studies.

В статье приведен правовой анализ явления хищнической наукометрии, дано определение: хищническая наукометрия – это недобросовестная деловая практика манипулирования методами наукометрии (измерения научной активности) для спекулятивной дискредитации научных изданий, отдельных публикаций, авторов и научных учреждений с целью получения привилегированного положения и неправомерной выгоды. Показано, что монополизация рынка научной информации с помощью хищнической наукометрии угрожает академической автономии научных изданий, их праву самостоятельно организовать распространение результатов исследований и идей ученых. Предложены стратегии правовой защиты жертв хищнической наукометрии, такие, как выяснение правовых отношений, обжалование оскорбительных оценок и регуляторных злоупотреблений, разоблачение наукометрических монополий, автономные наукометрические исследования.

Шеляженко Ю.В. Хищническая наукометрия как вызов академической автономии научных изданий: стратегии правовой защиты деловой репутации // Universum: Экономика и юриспруденция : электрон. научн. журн. 2017. № 11(44). URL: http://7universum.com/ru/economy/archive/item/5201

In an attempt to estimate the quality of an open access journal the indexing in the Scopus database is often perceived as a positive indicator. While the inclusion in the Beall's list is anticipated as at least a serious warning sign that the journal (or the publisher behind is) might be predatory. On numerous occasions it has been noticed that there are journals included in both lists/databases. This apparent discrepancy is recently investigated, and it was concluded that both lists are not flawless. This report investigated whether the journals included in the Beall's list are still in the list of Scopus titles or discontinued in the meantime.

There has been a growing concern about fraud peer review articles that have been published in some journals in favor of their authors&#39; affiliation, which have been discussed extensively by some researchers. This research paper introduces another a new challenge in academic world concerning journals’ editors who look at authors&#39; affiliations rather than papers&#39; contents. In this short paper, we will introduce this alarming problem and do an experimental test by submitting computer generated papers to some journals and finally present the results of our experiment. The paper is an expression of our concern about providing for maximum high ethics in and quality of publication policy of modern scientific journals.

This paper presents the various problems faced by the academic community and the connection of some of these issues to the “golden road” to open access. While open access publishing increases the accessibility of science, it puts the world of academic research at a
series of risks which may be categorized in several directions . First of all, there are the so called predatory publishers who create conditions for publishing fake research which is then cited and used by other authors. Th is leads to falsification of the real picture of scholarly research and hinders the normal development of science. The n ext direction is the emergence of “hijacked” journals, which offer scientists an easy publication for a fee. These marginal journals use fake impact factors to mislead scientists about their prestige and quality. In addition, problems with fake academic conferences, fake authorship and plagiarism are
deeper. Methods of social engineering such as email phishing are used to steal personal information and use it for the purposes of fake science.
The general characteristics of marginal scientific publications are identified with a view to recognizing and limiting the performance of fake science. Some of these frauds are unknown to researchers because of the lack of detailed research on the types of cybercrime in the academic world.

Od lat słyszymy takie nazwy jak „drapieżni wydawcy” (predatory publishers),
„drapieżne czasopisma” (predatory journals) i „drapieżne konferencje” (predatory
conferences) – i niestety są to określenia coraz bardziej nasilających się zjawisk
w świecie nauki. Autorzy tych pseudonaukowych tworów żerują głównie na
doktorantach i młodych naukowcach, obiecując szybkie publikacje w czasopismach
o wysokim wskaźniku Impact Factor. Po co? Podobnie jak w innych formach
cyberprzestępczości, przede wszystkim w celu wyłudzenia pieniędzy.

Authors who publish in scientific or scholarly journals today face the risk of publishing in so-called predatory journals. These journals exploit the noble idea of the Open Access movement, whose goal is to make the latest scientific findings available for free. Predatory journals, unlike the reputable ones working on an Open Access basis, neglect the review process and publish low-quality submissions. The basic attributes of predatory journals are a very quick review process or even none at all, failure to be transparent about author fees for publishing an article, misleading potential authors by imitating the names of well-established journals, and false information on indexing in renowned databases or assigned impact factor. Some preventive measures against publishing in predatory journals or drawing information from them are: a thorough credibility check of the journal’s webpages, verification of the journal’s indexing on Beall’s List and in the following databases: Web of Science Core Collection, Scopus, ERIH PLUS and DOAJ. Asking other scientists or scholars about their experience with a given journal can also be helpful. Without these necessary steps authors face an increased risk of publishing in a journal of poor quality, which will prevent them from obtaining Research and Development Council points (awarded based on the Information Register of Research & Development results); even more importantly, it may damage their reputation as well as the good name of their home institution in the professional community.

An unexpected, relatively unknown, pitfall of electronic journals is the proliferation of “fake journals,” fake in so far as there are no editorial boards nor peer reviews of submitted manuscripts. The author’s investigation and personal experience with one such journal is described. Although most of the submissions to that journal have been from Third World scholars taking advantage of the low fees, it is only a matter of time before unsuspecting scholars from Europe and North America become entangled in such journals.

The popularity of scholarly open access (OA) Journals is rapidly growing in amongst authors and readers. This has resulted in challenges for scholars having to identify and avoid low-quality and flaky publishers.
In this flood of new publishers with varying quality, Peertechz swears to show the path for legitimate journals. Peertechz puts forward various sets of criteria intended to allow scholars to assess the quality of the journals.

Predatory conferences are growing like topsy, defrauding both academics and the universities who pay for their conference attendance.  Junior academics and those in young universities are particularly prone to this fraud.  After two colleagues were duped by the International Conference on Environmental Science and Technology, I submitted a nonsense abstract and had it accepted in a few days.

Press freedom and worldwide internet access have opened ample opportunity for a staggering number of poor open access journals and junk publishers to emerge. Dubious publishers are abusing and camouflaging the golden open access model. In 2012, Jeffery Beall shed light on the predatory journals (as he preferred to call them) and the threat to open access scientific publication. Publishing in predatory journals is continuing to be a major threat for the development of science in developing countries. The authors of this article proposed solutions and outline a fresh perspective to help authors avoid publishing in predatory journals.

The predatory nature of a journal is in constant debate because it depends on multiple factors, which keep evolving. The classification of a journal as being predatory, or not, is no longer exclusively associated with its open access status, by inclusion or exclusion on perceived reputable academic indexes and/or on whitelists or blacklists. Inclusion in the latter may itself be determined by a host of criteria, may be riddled with type I errors (e.g., erroneous inclusion of a truly predatory journal in a whitelist) and/or type II errors (e.g., erroneous exclusion of a truly valid scholarly journal in a whitelist). While extreme cases of predatory publishing behavior may be clear cut, with true predatory journals displaying ample predatory properties, journals in non-binary grey zones of predatory criteria are difficult to classify. They may have some legitimate properties, but also some illegitimate ones. In such cases, it might be too extreme to refer to such entities as "predatory". Simply referring to them as "potentially predatory" or "borderline predatory" also does little justice to discern a predatory entity from an unscholarly, low-quality, unprofessional, or exploitative one. Faced with the limitations caused by this gradient of predatory dimensionality, this paper introduces a novel credit-like rating system, based in part on well-known financial credit ratings companies used to assess investment risk and creditworthiness, to assess journal or publisher quality. Cognizant of the weaknesses and criticisms of these rating systems, we suggest their use as a new way to view the scholarly nature of a journal or publisher. When used as a tool to supplement, replace, or reinforce current sets of criteria used for whitelists and blacklists, this system may provide a fresh perspective to gain a better understanding of predatory publishing behavior. Our tool does not propose to offer a definitive solution to this problem.