Science · May 29, 2024

Predatory journals: what they are and how to avoid them

Learn how to identify predatory journals, avoid questionable editorial practices, and protect the quality of your scientific publications.

Share

This content may help other people who are beginning their research.

What are predatory journals?

According to the Predatory Journals website, they operate “an exploitative academic publishing business model that charges authors publication fees without checking the quality and legitimacy of articles, and without providing the editorial and publishing services offered by legitimate academic journals, whether open access or otherwise” [1; translated from Portuguese].

In short, predatory journals are like shop windows displaying counterfeit clothing: they cannot be considered scientific journals.

Why aren’t predatory journals scientific?

One of the key processes that establishes an article’s scientific credibility is peer review. Before publication, a panel of experts, preferably with doctoral qualifications, assesses the manuscript. Reviewers may recommend acceptance or rejection and suggest ways to improve its theoretical foundation, methodology, and/or structure.

The number of reviewers per article varies from one journal to another. However, a peer review assessment should involve at least two reviewers.

Predatory journals, however, either skip peer review altogether or carry it out superficially to disguise their real purpose. When a review does take place, it is often completed within hours or days, and the study is accepted without any suggestions for improvement.

Keep in mind: reviewing an article is demanding, detailed work that cannot be done properly in such a short time without being able to devote oneself to it full-time. Peer reviewers are usually academics with doctoral qualifications who teach in undergraduate and graduate programs and volunteer some of their free time to review manuscripts. They assess not only the scientific writing but also potential methodological flaws, the suitability of the theoretical and conceptual frameworks, and the references used, checking whether the research draws on recent, relevant studies. It is therefore common for a reviewer to spend weeks, or even a month, assessing a single article. The turnaround times advertised by these journals raise questions about whether peer review is actually taking place and, if so, whether it is being done properly.

Do all predatory journals charge fees?

No. Not every journal that engages in predatory practices charges fees.

A journal may also be considered predatory if it uses its influence to benefit itself or others, as illustrated in the Predatory Journals post “Misconduct in a journal from the Amazon region” [2].

The post reports allegations that a Brazilian journal used its scope to favor certain candidates preparing to apply for a public-sector position, publishing articles without transparency in issues that had already been closed.

What is wrong with publishing in a predatory journal?

Predatory journals publish anything—and I really do mean anything. During the pandemic, a group of researchers set out to expose this problem through a social experiment: they submitted fake articles to supposedly scientific journals. Everything was fabricated, from the data to the authors. A genuine peer review could easily have called the articles’ authenticity into question. They linked COVID-19 and cancer to Pokémon, fictional creatures from Nintendo’s game franchise, and even included passages warning readers that the journal was predatory.

The image comes from the fake article “Expression of the pokemon gene and pikachurin protein in the pokémon pikachu”, published in “Academia Journal of Scientific Research” in 2020 [3].

Among the clues the authors left in one article to reveal that the study was fabricated was this passage:

“[…] epidemiologists believe it is highly likely that a journal publishing this article does not practice peer review and must therefore be predatory” [4; translated from Portuguese].

As absurd as these cases may seem, fake articles are not always so easy for readers to spot. This becomes even more concerning when we consider that some of the most widespread and deadly examples of misinformation began as supposedly scientific articles published in these journals.

Why are predatory journals harmful to society?

In its post “Is Frontiers Media a Predatory Publisher?”, the Predatory Journals website highlights alarming publications in several journals belonging to the major international publisher Frontiers [5].

According to the post, Frontiers in Public Health published a controversial article in 2014 questioning the link between HIV and AIDS. Despite numerous complaints from public health professionals and experts, the article was initially reclassified as an opinion piece rather than retracted and remained available online. It was eventually retracted in 2019, following a change in the journal’s editor-in-chief [6]. In another case, a paper linking vaccines to autism was provisionally accepted by the same journal in 2016 and removed only after criticism on what is now X, formerly Twitter [7].

In 2021, during the pandemic, another controversial article was provisionally accepted by a different journal from the same publisher, Frontiers in Pharmacology. It supported the use of the antiparasitic drug ivermectin to treat COVID-19. The editors later rejected the paper [8].

The post also describes concerns reported by former editorial team members at some of the publisher’s journals, including claims that articles were expected to be accepted regardless of peer reviewers’ recommendations—a practice associated with predatory journals.

These cases have something in common: the articles were used to provide a supposedly scientific basis for some of the best-known examples of misinformation spread on social media. Yet members of the public cannot be expected to identify the many methodological flaws and research biases in these studies. To them, the article appears to be genuine scientific research.

That is why researchers need to understand what predatory journals are, how to identify them, and, above all, why they should neither publish in them nor cite studies they have published.

How can you identify predatory journals?

There are several ways to identify a predatory journal. Some of the best-known resources are:

  1. Beall’s List – A list of journals classified as predatory that can easily be searched by name. The website also offers advice on avoiding predatory journals, although it was last updated in December 2021.
  2. DOAJ indexing – DOAJ is an indexing database considered a first step in establishing that a journal is not predatory. Inclusion is not straightforward: journals must comply with all the good editorial practice criteria established by COPE. However, not every scientific journal is indexed in DOAJ, so it is best used as an additional factor when assessing a journal’s legitimacy.
  3. Think. Check. Submit. – An excellent tool for assessing a journal’s trustworthiness. Researchers can complete the checklist directly on the website, and it is available in several languages, including Portuguese. It is highly recommended even when you have no reason to suspect predatory practices, as it also helps you decide whether the journal is a good fit for your topic.
  4. The Predatory Journals website – This serves a similar purpose to Beall’s List, but is kept up to date and includes educational resources and warning posts about journals, such as those discussed above.
  5. The journal evaluation tool developed by Rele et al. (2017) – A straightforward tool designed to assess a scientific journal’s credibility. Anyone can use it.
  6. Inclusion in the JCR Master List – To have a Journal Impact Factor, a journal must be included in Clarivate’s system, which applies extremely rigorous criteria, including the quality of the articles it publishes. As with DOAJ, relatively few journals are included in the JCR Master List, making this another factor to consider.

My criteria for identifying predatory journals

1. Is the journal’s scope vague or unfocused, covering unrelated subjects?
2. Does the website contain grammatical errors?
3. Does it claim to have an impact factor other than Clarivate’s?
4. Is there no clear description of the editorial workflow, the journal’s scope, or its ethical principles?
5. Does the editorial team look suspicious—for example, do you recognize no one, or do the profiles look fake?
6. Is the editorial team too small for the number of articles published?
7. Are manuscripts submitted by email?
8. Does the journal promise rapid publication?
9. Is the focus on paying fees rather than on peer review?
10. Is the contact email unprofessional or unaffiliated with an institution—for example, a Gmail or Hotmail address?
11. Is contact information limited to an email address?
Adapted from Shamseer et al. (2017) [9]

To make things easier, we have put together a list of nursing journals organized by their Qualis rating and the presence of predatory practices.

Journals highlighted in red were classified based on the Predatory Journals website and/or the paper “Mapeamento de revistas brasileiras com práticas editoriais predatórias”, published by the Brazilian Association of Scientific Editors (ABEC) [10].

To open the list, click here or on the image above.

References

  1. PREDATORY JOURNALS. Scientific Publishing. [Place not identified]: Predatory Journals, c2024. Available at: https://predatoryjournals.org. Accessed May 28, 2024.
  2. PREDATORY JOURNALS. Misconduct in a journal from the Amazon region. Predatory Journals, [place not identified], January 22, 2024. Available at: https://predatoryjournals.org/news/f/misconduct-in-a-journal-from-the-amazon-region. Accessed May 28, 2024.
  3. SAMUEL, O; GANKA, J.; MATTAN, S. Expression of the pokemon gene and pikachurin protein in the pokémon pikachu. Academia Journal of Scientific Research, Nigeria, vol. 8, no. 7, pp. 235–238, 2020. Available at: https://zenodo.org/records/5652365. Accessed May 28, 2024.
  4. ELM, U. et al. Cyllage City COVID-19 Outbreak Linked to Zubat Consumption. American Journal of Biomedical Science & Research, California, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 140–142, 2020. Available at: https://zenodo.org/records/3748280. Accessed May 28, 2024.
  5. PREDATORY JOURNALS. Is Frontiers Media a Predatory Publisher? Predatory Journals, [place not identified], March 19, 2023. Available at: https://predatoryjournals.org/news/f/is-frontiers-media-a-predatory-publisher. Accessed May 28, 2024.
  6. FRONTIERS EDITORIAL OFFICE. Retraction: Questioning the HIV-AIDS hypothesis: 30 years of dissent. Frontiers in Public Health, Switzerland, vol. 7, p. 334, 2019. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6830318/. Accessed May 28, 2024.
  7. CHAWLA, D. S. Study linking vaccines to autism pulled following heavy criticism. Retraction Watch, [place not identified], November 28, 2016. Available at: https://retractionwatch.com/2016/11/28/study-linking-vaccines-autism-pulled-frontiers-following-heavy-criticism/. Accessed May 28, 2024.
  8. OFFORD, C. Frontiers removes controversial Ivermectin paper pre-publication. The Scientist, [place not identified], March 2, 2021. Available at: https://www.the-scientist.com/frontiers-removes-controversial-ivermectin-paper-pre-publication-68505. Accessed May 28, 2024.
  9. SHAMSEER, L. et al. Potential predatory and legitimate biomedical journals: can you tell the difference? A cross-sectional comparison. BMC Medicine, London, vol. 15, no. 28, 2017. Available at: https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-017-0785-9. Accessed May 28, 2024.
  10. ANDRADE, D. A. F. et al. Mapeamento de revistas brasileiras com práticas editoriais predatórias. In: ABEC MEETING 2023, 2023, Paraná. Anais eletrônicos […]. São Paulo: ABEC Meeting Anais, 2024. Available at: https://ojs.abecbrasil.org.br/index.php/abec/article/view/196. Accessed May 28, 2024.