Predatory journals: what are they and how to avoid them?

What are Predatory Journals?

According to the Predatory Journals website, they are “an exploitative academic publishing business model that involves charging publication fees to authors without verifying the quality and legitimacy of articles, and without providing editorial and publishing services that legitimate academic journals provide, whether open access or not.” [1].

In short, predatory journals can be compared to display windows exhibiting counterfeit clothes, as they cannot be considered scientific.

Why aren't predatory journals scientific?

One of the fundamental processes for an article to be considered scientific is called "peer review." This process consists of the evaluation of the manuscript by a group of specialists, preferably doctors, before publication in the journal. In this process, reviewers can recommend anything from acceptance to rejection of the manuscript, as well as suggest improvements to its theoretical, methodological, and/or structural quality.

It's important to note that the number of reviewers per article varies from journal to journal. However, to be considered a peer review, there must be at least two reviewers per evaluation.

Despite this, predatory journals either do not practice peer review, or, when they do, they perform it in any way, just to 'mask' their real objective. It is common for this evaluation, when performed, to be done in a very short period of time (hours or days) and for the study, when returned, to be accepted without any suggestions for improvement.

Understand: evaluating an article involves hard and detailed work that, without exclusive dedication, becomes unfeasible to be performed adequately in such a short period of time. Peer reviewers are usually doctoral professors associated with undergraduate and postgraduate programs, who volunteer to carry out the work of evaluating the article, dedicating part of their free time to it. Furthermore, in their role, the peer reviewer must observe not only scientific writing, but also possible methodological flaws, the adequacy of theoretical-conceptual frameworks and the references used, seeking to understand whether the research uses recent and relevant studies on the topic. Thus, it is common for a reviewer to take weeks or even a month to evaluate a single article. Therefore, the evaluation time of these journals draws attention to whether peer review is truly being carried out and, when carried out, if it is being done adequately.

Do all predatory journals charge fees?

No, not all journals with predatory practices charge fees.

A journal can be considered predatory for using its "power" to influence or favor itself or third parties, as can be observed in the post "Misconduct in a journal from the Amazon region" on the Predatory Journals website [2].

In it, there is a complaint about a Brazilian journal that allegedly used its scope to favor some individuals who would compete in a public tender, publishing articles without any transparency in volumes that, until then, were already closed.

What's the problem with publishing in a predatory journal?

Predatory journals publish anything, and when I say anything, I mean absolutely anything. With that in mind, during the pandemic, a group of researchers, trying to highlight the problem of predatory journals, conducted a social experiment by sending fake articles to "scientific" journals. All the material in the articles was forged, from the data to the authors. However, the authenticity of the articles could be easily questioned in a peer review, as they associated COVID-19 and cancer with Pokémon, fictional creatures from Nintendo's game franchise, and included excerpts that warned readers about the predatory nature of the journal.

In one of the articles, among all the clues left by the authors about the inauthenticity of the study, the following excerpt can be observed:

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

Although these cases are outlandish, the fake article will not always be so obvious to the reader, and this becomes even more concerning when we consider that some of the biggest and most lethal fake news started as "scientific" articles published in these journals.

Why do predatory journals represent a harm to society?

In its post titled "Is Frontiers Media a Predatory Publisher?", the Predatory Journals website warns of alarming publications in various journals associated with a large international publisher: Frontiers [5].

According to the post, in 2014, the journal Frontiers in Public Health published a controversial article that questioned the connection between HIV and AIDS. However, despite numerous complaints from public health professionals and experts, it was decided that the article would not be retracted, but reclassified as an opinion piece, remaining online to this day. Only in 2019, after the change of the journal's editor-in-chief, was the article finally retracted [6]. Although it seems like an isolated situation, in 2016, an article linking vaccines to autism was provisionally accepted in the same journal and removed only after complaints on X, formerly Twitter [7].

In 2021, amidst the pandemic, another controversial article was provisionally accepted, but in another journal from the publisher, Frontiers in Pharmacology. The text supported the use of the antiparasitic drug ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19. The text was later rejected by the editors [8].

It should be noted that the text also presents problems reported by former members of editorial teams who worked for some of the publisher's journals, demonstrating that articles should be accepted regardless of peer reviewers' recommendations, a common practice in predatory journals.

Given this, we can observe that all situations have something in common: they were articles used to "scientifically" base some of the most famous fake news spread on social media. However, the population is not obligated to know how to identify the numerous methodological flaws and research biases present in these "studies." For them, that is an authentic scientific article.

Therefore, it is so important for researchers to know what a predatory journal is, how to identify it, and, above all, not to publish their articles and not to cite studies published in them.

How to identify predatory journals?

Currently, there are several ways to identify a predatory journal. Some of the most famous are:

1. 1. Beall's List – This is a list of journals classified as predatory that can be easily searched by name. The site also contains several tips to avoid predatory journals; however, its last update was in December 2021.
   2. Indexing in DOAJ – The DOAJ is an indexing database considered the "first step" to prove that a journal is not predatory. Getting into DOAJ is not simple, as the journal must comply with all the good editorial practice criteria established by COPE. However, since not every scientific journal is indexed in DOAJ, it is valid to use it as an additional criterion for evaluating the authenticity of the journal.
   3. The Think. Check. Submit tool – This is an excellent tool for evaluating the reliability of a journal. The researcher can fill it out directly on the website, and it is translated into several languages, including Portuguese. Its use is highly recommended, regardless of suspicion of predatory practices, as it also helps to reflect on whether that journal is the best for your topic.
   4. The Predatory Journals website – This site has the same function as Beall's list, however it is updated and contains various educational materials and alert posts about journals, as cited above.
   5. The journal evaluation tool developed by Rele et al. (2017) – It is a simple tool designed to determine the credibility of a scientific journal. It can be used by anyone.
   6. Indexing in JCR Master List – To have an impact factor, the journal needs to be indexed in the Clarivate system, which has absurdly rigorous criteria for this, including the quality of the articles published in that journal. Like DOAJ, few journals are in the JCR Master List, making this another criterion to be evaluated.

References

1. 1. PREDATORY JOURNALS. Scientific Publishing. [S.l.]: Predatory Journals, c2024. Available from: https://predatoryjournals.org. Accessed: 28 may 2024.
   2. PREDATORY JOURNALS. Misconduct in a journal from the Amazon region. Predatory Journals, [S.l.], 22 jan. 2024. Available from: https://predatoryjournals.org/news/f/misconduct-in-a-journal-from-the-amazon-region. Accessed: 28 may 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, v. 8, n. 7, p. 235-238, 2020. Available from: https://zenodo.org/records/5652365. Accessed: 28 may 2024.
   4. ELM, U. et al. Cyllage City COVID-19 Outbreak Linked to Zubat Consumption. American Journal of Biomedical Science & Research, California, v. 8, n. 2, p. 140-142, 2020. Available from: https://zenodo.org/records/3748280. Accessed: 28 may 2024.
   5. PREDATORY JOURNALS. Is Frontiers Media a Predatory Publisher? Predatory Journals, [S.l.], 19 mar. 2023. Available from: https://predatoryjournals.org/news/f/is-frontiers-media-a-predatory-publisher. Accessed: 28 may 2024.
   6. FRONTIERS EDITORIAL OFFICE. Retraction: Questioning the HIV-AIDS hypothesis: 30 years of dissent. Frontiers in Public Health, Switzerland, v. 7, p. 334, 2019. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6830318/. Accessed: 28 may 2024.
   7. CHAWLA, D. S. Study linking vaccines to autism pulled following heavy criticism. Retraction Watch, [S.l.], 28 nov. 2016. Available from: https://retractionwatch.com/2016/11/28/study-linking-vaccines-autism-pulled-frontiers-following-heavy-criticism/. Accessed: 28 may 2024.
   8. OFFORD, C. Frontiers removes controversial Ivermectin paper pre-publication. The Scientist, [S.l.], 2 mar. 2021. Available from: https://www.the-scientist.com/frontiers-removes-controversial-ivermectin-paper-pre-publication-68505. Accessed: 28 may 2024.
   9. SHAMSEER, L. et al. Potential predatory and legitimate biomedical journals: can you tell the difference? A cross-sectional comparison. BMC Medicine, London,  v. 15, n. 28, 2017. Available from: https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-017-0785-9. Accessed: 28 may 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 from: https://ojs.abecbrasil.org.br/index.php/abec/article/view/196. Accessed: 28 may 2024.