Deceptive Academic Journals: An excerpt from The Predator Effect

Predatory journals — even the term is controversial — have been a vexing problem for many years, and have certainly been a subject of coverage at Retraction Watch and elsewhere. We’re pleased to present an excerpt a new book, The Predator Effect: Understanding the Past, Present and Future of Deceptive Academic Journals, by longtime publishing industry observer Simon Linacre. The citations in the text can be found in the book, which is available open access.

The problems facing authors with regard to predatory journals can be summed up with the plight of an academic this author met in Kuwait in the mid- 2010s. Under pressure from his institution to publish in English-language journals, he submitted, paid for, and published an article in a journal that he subsequently discovered to be predatory. In panic, he asked his superior what he should do, and the sympathetic senior academic advised he should publish the article again in a different, more reputable journal.

Not understanding the problems associated with dual publication, he duly submitted the article again, which was published by the second journal. Problem solved, or so he thought, until a certain publishing executive gave a presentation at his institution and described the breach of publication ethics surrounding the submission of the same article to two different journals. 

The moral of this story? Well, for one, authors should be very much aware of all aspects of publication ethics, which, despite their importance and career-threatening consequences, are rarely taught in any depth at even the most research-intensive universities. However, even if adequate training were given to all postgraduates as potential authors, many would still fall for predatory scams and may even be alerted to the attractiveness of guaranteed publication in a matter of days for just a few hundred dollars. 

Sadly, there has been little research done in this area so far, presumably because those authors who have published in predatory journals would rather not acknowledge and answer any questions about it. In the next section, we will look in depth at one of the few published articles focused explicitly on author motivations, which centers on whether authors are either unaware they have published in fake journals or are fully aware and have few qualms about doing so. 

UNAWARE OR UNETHICAL . . . OR BOTH? 

The standout research in the area of author motivations relating to predatory journals was published in 2017 by Denmark-based academic Tove Faber Frandsen (Frandsen, 2017). The central question of “unaware or unethical” in the heading of this chapter summarizes the key finding in Frandsen’s article, which had two main research questions: 

1. Are authors citing potential predatory journals and potential poor scientific standards journals predominantly from developing countries? 
2. Are authors citing potential predatory journals and potential poor scientific standards journals generally inexperienced authors with few publications and citations? 

In the article, Frandsen addressed a few assumptions in academia and scholarly publishing about who these authors were who actually published in predatory journals. These assumptions range from those who think that nobody could be so naïve as to publish in such journals to those who believe nobody in the West would stoop so low as to publish in such journals. There are a whole range of prejudices to unpack in these and other thoughts around the motivations behind authors publishing in predatory journals, which is the context around the research conducted by Frandsen. 

The study first looks at the literature on author motivations to publish in predatory journals, which is limited to say the least. Authors have not typically come forward when prompted about publishing in such journals, and Frandsen references the German study we saw in Chapter 6 where not one of the 5,000 German authors identified as having published in predatory journals came forward (Krause and Langhans, 2018). What few studies exist show that the reasons authors cite for publishing in predatory journals come down to awareness (or lack thereof ) or motivation. The latter is interesting, as this covers different motivations such as the perceived ease with which publications can lead to promotion or a cynical dissatisfaction with the scholarly communications industry as a whole (Frandsen, 2017). 

Frandsen also offers some solutions, based around the education of authors on the inherent issues associated with predatory journals, but also with a review of how incentives and rewards can lead to authors being tempted to make the wrong choices. It is worth reminding ourselves why authors want to publish in the first place at this point, and typically it is for one or more of four reasons: to register an idea or experiment or finding; to certify and validate research; to disseminate that research; and to archive the research for future reference. Frandsen’s study is backed up by Yeoh et al (2017), who found similar motivations and called for a new tranche of legitimate publishing outlets to support academics from developing countries to present their research in a safe environment away from the reach of predatory journals. 

It is perhaps instructive to review these traditional motivations through the lens of predatory publishing, where authors might be led to believe they are achieving all these outcomes but in fact can fail at each one. In turn, they may register their idea, but do so in the wrong place without any prospect of changing; any certification is superficial without proper peer review; dissemination is very poor in predatory journals and sometimes non-existent; and there are few if any guarantees of secure archiving as the thousands of empty journals that exist attest. 

PUSHMI-PULLYU 

So, is Frandsen right in saying that it is broadly a combination of unethical and unaware authors who contribute to predatory journals? While there are few other articles directly answering the question of author motivation, there is a healthy volume of papers that look at why authors might be tempted. These come in two forms, essentially dependent on push or pull factors. On the push side, the well-known “publish or perish” phenomenon is quoted extensively, describing cultures in higher education where there is both the implicit and explicit encouragement for academics to publish their research, often following fairly prescriptive lists of the “right” journals. Incentives have come in the shape of financial awards in countries like China or research grants in Australia for publishing in top-ranked journals, and on the flip side elsewhere a lack of promotion opportunities or even the sack if publishing targets aren’t met. 

For an insight into the quandaries often faced by authors, one need only look to India, where the numbers of authors publishing in predatory journals and the number of journals themselves are perhaps the largest in the world (Shen and Bjork, 2015). In an article investigating the problem, a call was made for the Indian government to step in (Seethapathy et al, 2016), and in the years following, numerous attempts were made by the UGC to create lists of both preferred and questionable journals for Indian authors to publish in. In the original investigation, authors found to have published in a sample of Beall’s List journals cited help with promotion and institutional pressures as the two greatest push factors—although it is also worth noting that a majority also denied that the journals they had published in were predatory. 

This brings into focus the difficulties felt by two communities of authors in particular—early career scholars (ECRs) and those from the Global South. As Nicholas et al pointed out in their study of ECRs (2020), there is considerable concern among them about predatory journals, with 10 percent saying they avoided publishing in OA journals because of the perceived poor quality of them, in part due to the predatory publishing phenomenon. Perhaps just as revealingly, the first two reasons given by ECRs for not publishing in OA journals—prohibitive costs (38%) and lack of available options (21%)—are two of the key selling points predatory publishers use to lure authors into publishing with them.

These concerns are likely to be particularly acute for ECRs based at universities in the Global South where there is likely to be less financial support for paying high OA fees or a support structure designed to help them make informed decisions about publication outlets. However, it is important to point out that while many countries in the Global South figured among the top countries for authors who have published in predatory journals in Shen and Bjork’s study, countries outside, such as the United States, were also prominent, so it is too simplistic to suggest that predatory journals are “just” a problem for those countries. 

Other problems emanating from initial push factors include asymmetries of information. For example, where predatory journals have found them- selves included in databases used for publication recommendation, this can attract other submissions. In Italy, this was found to be the case in a large survey of Italian authors, in addition to a “hedging your bets”–type strategy where a push for authors to publish in journals was not regulated by publishing experts (Bagues et al, 2017). 

Strong pressure to publish in certain journals can undoubtedly produce the right circumstances for gaming to occur, and publishing mandates may also stimulate this behavior. This is a concern held by some around OA man- dates, as they could persuade authors to publish in cheap and quick predatory journals to tick the right OA box (Linacre et al, 2019). However, while the potential is there for OA mandates to add to the problem of predatory publishing behaviors, there is no evidence to suggest this is happening, with some studies suggesting that from an OA perspective the number of articles being included in predatory journals may be decreasing (Eykens et al, 2019). 

When we look at the consequences of pull factors in academia related to predatory journals, we can see the temptations that lure authors, such as promises of fast publication times from the frequent email invitations academics tend to receive on a regular basis. Speed to publication is often top of the publishing wish list for authors, and knowing that an article will be published quickly may incentivize authors submitting to predatory journals, which often lead with promises of fast turnaround times (Linacre et al, 2019).

Such author decisions may be triggered by emails that promise fast publishing times as well as other simply too-good-to-be-true offers that aim to stimulate the desired response in authors. In one study, of the few authors who responded to a survey on publishing in questionable journals, over two-fifths said they initially identified the journal they submitted to from soliciting emails (Cobey et al, 2017b). 

Simple convenience may also be a pull factor, which the controversial Thompson Rivers University (TRU) scandal in Canada perhaps demonstrates. In 2017, TRU academic Derek Pyne published a paper investigating the publishing habits of some of his colleagues and other academics, claiming that publications in questionable journals were for some researchers correlated with receiving internal research awards (Pyne, 2017). While some of this research has been questioned (Tsigaris and Teixeira da Silva, 2019), the underlying point still holds that pull factors linked to predatory journals have the potential to influence the decision-making of academic researchers.”

Simon Linacre is Head of Content, Brand & Press at Digital Science. He previously worked at Cabells as Marketing Director and for 15 years at Emerald Publishing, where he led its management journals program. He has been published on the topics of bibliometrics, publication ethics and research impact. Simon is a Committee on Publication Ethics Trustee and an Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers tutor, and holds masters degrees in philosophy and international business. 

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