We’ve recently been seeing a lot of attention to predatory publishers, especially with reference to lists of predatory journals, and ‘safe lists’ (see COPE’s Officers’ Statement on identifying fake journals). Here, we offer an overview of how this issue intersects with a number of other problems in scholarly publishing.
At COPE it is clear that predatory publishing is just one aspect of a wider network of unethical activities. The different elements of this network seek to profit from a system which dilutes the scholarly literature, either dupes authors or actively promotes their unethical behaviour, and wastes millions of pounds of research funding. These actors capitalise on the easy circulation of information across national boundaries on the internet, the pressures to publish in academia, and the growth of Open Access publishing models which can make authors more open to believe offers of rapid publication and low article processing charges (APCs).
Predatory publishing relies on a profit-making business model, usually with little regard for ethical standards. COPE’s guidance on predatory publishing defines the practice as ‘the systematic for-profit publication of purportedly scholarly content…in a deceptive or fraudulent way and without any regard for quality assurance’. Some of the hallmarks of a predatory journal are a rapid turnaround to publication (and consequently little or no peer review), high article processing fees to maximise income (others keep fees low to entice authors), and lack of transparency to authors on policies. Scholars are often targeted via unsolicited direct marketing, lured in by (often bogus) claims of "esteemed editors", proper indexing, and high impact factors, only to find that they have inadvertently agreed to publish in a journal which lacks any academic credentials. Article processing fees are frequently requested with no advance notice, or at a higher level than advertised (if they are advertised at all). Requests to withdraw articles receive no response, a flat refusal, or a request for further fees (see, for example, two cases brought to the COPE Forum: Duplicate publication in a predatory journal and Withdrawal of accepted manuscript from predatory journal). In other cases articles are published with no fee in order to expand the journal’s repository of publications. We regularly receive emails at COPE from distressed authors who find themselves stuck with an acceptance in a journal they no longer wish to be associated with, but from which they cannot extricate themselves. Add the fact that they are often early in their careers (and thus potentially less knowledgeable about the tell-tale signs of bad practices), and we have a potent mix of disappointment, blocked paths to career advancement, and wasted scholarship.
We have previously featured a guest editorial from our colleagues at Think.Check.Submit on avoiding predatory publications. The COPE discussion document on predatory publishing also includes steps which can be taken to identify and avoid these entities. What is becoming increasingly clear, though, is that predatory publishing is a very broad term which covers a whole range of bad practices, all of which are benefiting from business models which can operate on a large scale.
One of the practices most closely allied to predatory publishing is the predatory conference. The two types of organisation operate in a similar way and are often branches of the same businesses. They again use direct and unsolicited marketing to contact academics, promise prestigious events, and charge large fees. Think.Check.Attend provides resources to identify and avoid predatory conferences. While COVID-19 suspended the possibility of in-person conference, predatory organisations, like legitimate ones, moved their business online, seeking to attract plenary speakers to give them credibility. The model changed, with conferences reducing delegate fees but increasing numbers of attendees. It remains to be seen if the problem has worsened or not as a result.
Another type of predatory business practice is the hijacked journal. Here, the website of a genuine journal is cloned, potentially together with information on impact factors, indexing, and claims to have good ethical practices. The unwitting author submits their article, receives a request for article processing fees, but their article either remains unpublished, or appears on a site which in fact has no good academic credentials. This practice is particularly hard to quantify but Anna Abalkina estimates that a single hijacked journal can dupe hundreds of authors.
Equally egregious and capable of acting at scale are paper mills. The most recent COPE guidance in the area defines these as 'An individual, group of individuals, or organisation that aims to manipulate the publication process to achieve the publication of articles for the purposes of financial gain'. Essentially they produce 'original' papers for sale, sometimes on a large scale, and sometimes with an acceptance from a journal already in place. Again, the common factor is the active promotion of unethical practices at a price. Paper mills advertise their products, but often in terms which could be couched simply as editorial services. They have been identified in a range of countries, and their influence permeates hundreds of journals.
Paper mills differ from predatory journals in that they presuppose an intent to deceive on the part of the author as well as the business offering the service. An author cannot be accidentally duped into purchasing the services of a paper mill, although their motivations may vary (and see a suggestion that some authors fully understand that they are colluding in poor practice by publishing in predatory journals). Scholarship in this area tends to focus on the pressures to publish in order to secure promotion or employment; pressures which are scarcely compatible with the hours available to academics, and especially those also engaged in teaching or practice. However, the same pressures also direct authors to the attractions of the predatory journal, because it offers speed and volume in their publication output.
Some warning signs that a journal or conference may be predatory may coexist with good ethical practices, making them difficult at times to identify. Direct marketing, for example, is not in itself unethical. COPE’s Principles of transparency and best practice in scholarly publishing state simply that it must be ‘truthful and not misleading’, as well as ‘appropriate, well targeted, and unobtrusive’. Nor are profit-making or the use of article processing fees by their nature problematic as long as they are well signposted to authors. Many predatory journals hide their fees on pages which an author will not encounter in the process of preparing and submitting their article. Even the oversight of peer review is open to debate, with some reputable journals such as eLife experimenting with a model of no pre-publication peer review. The criteria for inclusion on a list of predatory journals is inevitably subjective and varies from one list to another. Publishers and editors may feel unfairly targeted and see submissions drop sharply as the result of their inclusion on a well-publicised list. Many commentators thus promote using lists of approved journals rather than those which purport to identify predatory ones.
The growing umbrella of unethical business practices bring further, unsavoury issues. One is that they target and cement global inequalities. A large proportion of the articles published in predatory publications originate from authors in Asia and Africa, for instance, where scholarly ethics may be less widely known, and where some research institutions may incentivise the volume of publications rather than their quality. The pressure to publish in non-native languages in some disciplines is a further driver of inequality which pushes authors towards predatory businesses like paper mills. In other settings publication is a necessary step to securing a job, but many early career researchers in those places lack a university affiliation, or the time to devote to an academic study alongside their practice.
All of this brings big challenges for publishers and journal editors. These unethical businesses are sophisticated and adept at evading detection (this would, after all, bring an end to their income). Tools like those under development by the STM Integrity Hub, and crowd-sourced detection like Retraction Watch’s Hijacked Journal Checker will help, but the scale of the problems is daunting. On the other hand, this is an area where the rapid growth of generative AI tools may close down some of the appeals of predatory journals. If an author can produce an ‘original’ article at minimal cost which can be submitted to a reputable journal this may well be a preferable option. Still, those involved with issues which affect many articles potentially across several publishers, must consider the implications of sharing information (COPE advice currently is to seek guidance, for example, from your publisher or institution’s legal team). Investigating the cases involved takes considerable resources, and publishers who issue mass retractions as a result risk negative attention. Smaller journals and publishers are inevitably less able to handle this volume of work.
Nonetheless, we must continue in our efforts to detect, prevent and correct these profit-driven and high-volume infractions of publication ethics. There is too much at stake for us to do anything else.
Alysa Levene, COPE Operations Manager
Further reading
-
Predatory publishing COPE discussion document
-
Identifying fake journals: COPE Officers’ Statement
-
Predatory publishing: next steps and where do we go from here? COPE Forum discussion, December 2020
-
The predator effect: understanding the past, present and future of deceptive academic journals Simon Linacre