Predatory publishing: where do we go from here?
Since COPE drafted a discussion paper on the topic of predatory publishing in 2019, many more scholarly papers have been published on various aspects of this issue so there is no lack of research into the practice. However, while research may be necessary, it is not a sufficient response to the problems associated with predatory publishers. Consequently, and more recently, the dialogue has turned to more practice based solutions.
What are the next steps that COPE or other industry organisations might consider as a response to the continued flourishing and growth of predatory journals, conferences, and publishers?
Guest speaker
As well as considering the questions below, Dr Kelly Cobey will describe the Authenticator Project, being developed by the Centre for Journalology, Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, University of Ottawa, Canada. Dr Cobey will present the center’s approach to educating the scholarly community about the nature of journal quality and transparency practices.
Questions for discussion
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Should COPE use its criteria for membership as an instrument to evaluate standards of scholarly publishing vehicles for the purpose of informing the following: authors, peer reviewers, readers, scholars invited to serve on editorial boards, and universities evaluating scholarly productivity?
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Should COPE and/or other industry organisations form a global compact of signatories to commit to the practice of research and publication integrity and further to the active marginalisation of predatory publishing within the scholarly communities of universities, editors, and publishers? The Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing may be considered the de facto standards for membership among organisations, such as COPE, OASPA, DOAJ, and WAME, but this would be a proactive advancement of these principles, not just as membership criteria but as global standards for publication integrity.
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Should COPE and/or other industry organisations act as a third party retraction service for authors who have unknowingly published with a predatory publisher which will neither withdraw nor retract the articles at the request of the authors? This would include publishers who commit to publications which never appear.
Digital journal authenticator project
“The objective of the project is to develop a ‘Digital Journal Authenticator’ tool that can help stakeholders discern journal quality and transparency practices. We will employ a ‘user centred design strategy’, in which stakeholders such as researchers, journals, publishers, research institutions, and the public work with the research team to iteratively develop a tool that best meets their needs. The tool will provide users with a description of how a journal operates and empower them to use this information to determine whether they should interact with the journal (eg, read content, submit to the journal, or reference articles published there). The tool will be disseminated for free and will be open for others to build upon. This tool will help to safeguard against interactions with low quality journals.”
Register for the Forum
Following the discussion around predatory publishing, members' cases will be presented for discussion and advice from the Forum participants.
Register to attend the Forum, Tuesday 15 December, 2-3.30pm (GMT).
The Forum takes place by webinar and is available to COPE members only.
Your comments
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About this resource
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5 January 2022
Reassigned to Forum discussion topic filter
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21 January 2021
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14 January 2021
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7 December 2020
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3 December 2020
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3 December 2020
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Comments
The Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing are regarded as an example of "established industry best practices", along with the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals , by the NIH in the "Statement on Article Publication Resulting from NIH Funded Research" (https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/not-od-18-011.html). The Medline review process (https://www.nlm.nih.gov/lstrc/j_sel_faq.html) also includes checking journals conform with both guidelines. So, the Principles of Transparency are indeed used as a benchmark by groups beyond the four authoring organisations.
The NIH statement also encourages stakeholders to help authors find credible journals and mentions Think Check Submit, which in turn includes checking if a journal or publisher belongs to a recognised industry initiative like COPE. COPE has an important and challenging role that also needs the involvement of multiple stakeholders. In addition, people need to be reminded to check a journal/publisher is indeed a COPE member via the COPE website, and not rely on mentions of COPE in a journal/publisher website or possible misuse of COPE's logos. COPE members have an individualised COPE logo/badge.
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Mentioned in the webinar:
IAP (The Interacademy Partnership) is calling all researchers to complete an online survey (available in 7 languages) to "Help Combat Predatory Academic Journals & Conferences". The deadline is 31 December 2020. Please see:
https://www.interacademies.org/project/predatorypublishing
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Predatory publishing has increased in the developing country due to increase in publication count rather quality of actual research & publication. Its a crazy race for promotion, higher appointments , publication incentives. Some journals of universities also publish rehash shop worn work coz of keeping the publication cycle on. Also, Some editors are not even given access to the journal management system & are forced to accept articles by the institution (publisher) despite of under-rated work.
how these actions & many more are giving space to predatory publishing.
COPE can definitely with other associations can step ahead to bring stringent policies that can be adopted globally to minimize this form of malpractice.
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