Scholarly Publishing

Researchers and scholars have increased demands to publish and now are provided with many avenues of doing so, including open access.  These broader factors have given rise to deceptive* or predatory publishers, defined as academic / commercial publishers that use questionable practices to solicit, review, and distribute research, scholarly, or creative works. 

Open Access and The Rise of Deceptive or Predatory Publishers.  Open access publishers have minimal or no restrictions for their work to be read and accessed.  These publishers generally operate by having their publishing costs be covered by authors who pay a fee to have their research articles published.  A drawback to this model is the emergence of publishers that misuse the open access model.  Instead of freely distributing information for the benefit of creating new knowledge, deceptive publishers aim to make a profit off authors who are eager to pay for their research to be published. 

The Problem.  Deceptive publishing hurts scholarly pursuits in various ways:

• Deceptive publishers utilize questionable publishing conduct and ethics in terms of soliciting research, their editorial processes, and utilizing peer review, all of which affect the quality of information being published and added to bodies of knowledge.
• New and emerging research heavily relies on established knowledge to inform their studies, so the information it uses needs to be valid and accurate.    
• Later studies that are informed by deceptive publications are liable to be based on flawed or inaccurate premises, and may lead to negative outcomes or be a waste of time and resources.  
• An additional problem with such publishers is their journals and articles may be found in established indexes and databases as PubMed, ProQuest, or others while doing a literature review.
• Since deceptive publishers are readily available online and can be read by general audiences, poorly reviewed and published studies may hurt public trust in science and scholarly works.

Another problem is some funders found the results of their supported research in deceptive publishers:

• In response, the U.S National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other organizations released statements to caution researchers about submitting their work to these types of journals (e.g., NOT-OD-18-011), and recommend evaluating a publication before submitting manuscripts.

Possible Solutions.  A standard "list" of deceptive journals does not exist.  Publishing experts acknowledge the fluid nature of deceptive publishers make the use of checklists problematic for evaluating them.  Experts suggest to review qualitative and quantitative aspects of a publication, and then weigh and evaluate these attributes to decide whether or not a publication is deceptive.  This Research Guide provides some aspects to consider in your deliberation.  Contact your campus librarian if you need assistance.

A researcher will become cognizant of high impact journals, research organizations, and publishers as they read literature within their field.  However, some journals with scholarly titles may still have the attributes of a deceptive or predatory publication, so let the reader beware.

*Note: 'Deceptive' publishers is the largely accepted term synonymous with 'predatory' publishers; scholarly publishing and communication experts believe the first term accurately describes more of their attributes.

A deceptive publisher may have a combination of the following characteristics.  When considering whether or not a publication is deceptive, weigh the following since many works or publishers may possess one or more.

1. Promises of quick acceptance or peer review, often within 24 hours.
2. Aggressive, frequent, or unsolicited calls for manuscripts, usually by e-mail.
3. Exaggerated or fake bibliometrics such as Journal Impact Factor.
4. False bibliographic information such as ISSN.
5. The scope of a publication includes many unrelated topics or disciplines.
6. The publication is published irregularly.
7. Sham or misrepresented editorial board.
8. False-flag or hijacked publication:  one with a similar or slight variance in publication name.  See the hijacked Jokull Journal and the actual Jokull Journal of Earth Sciences.
9. Wants an author processing charge (APC) before acceptance of manuscript.
10. Publication is deceptive about its professional, scholarly affiliations, or make them up.
11. Contact information is a general e-mail address (e.g., @gmail.com).
12. Sponsored publications:  one that is created to promote an agenda or product by a company or organization.