The editors of the world’s top medical journals are sounding the alarm over the predatory practices of some journals that employ aggressive solicitation of manuscripts. Predatory practices include failing to publish a report after collecting fees to do so and failing to follow standard journal practices such as conducting peer review.
“These deceptive practices endanger authors, academic institutions, legitimate journals, legitimate publishers, the scholarly publishing process, science, and the public,” says an editorial published in JAMA® and several other leading medical and scientific journals.
The editorial was written by members of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Among the co-authors is Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, MD, PhD, MAS, editor-in-chief of JAMA and the JAMA Network™.
“It is difficult to watch this rapid increase in predatory journals, particularly during a time when misinformation about science and health continues to flourish,” said Dr. Bibbins-Domingo. “Practicing clinicians, patients, and the scientific community need trusted sources of information. Fake journals undermine this trust and threaten the integrity of the scientific publication process.”
The editorial warns of “predatory entities” that purposefully deceive authors into submitting fees along with their research.
“Profits rise with the number of authors whom the predatory journal successfully captures,” the committee says in the editorial. “The committee believes that the large number of increasingly bold predatory entities warrants shining a bright light on them and considering actions stakeholders can take to counter their deceptive efforts.”
What to check before you click “submit”
The committee is also urging authors to take a “think, check, submit” approach, meaning they should think about where the best place would be to publish their work and check for telling signs of predatory practices before submitting their manuscript.
The editorial highlights the Think. Check. Submit. website, which is the result of a cross-industry collaboration among the Association of University Presses, Committee on Publication Ethics and several other key organizations.
The site includes checklists for physicians and other authors seek to submit for publication in a journal or for a book or chapter.
For those seeking journal publication, the lengthy checklist breaks down a series of detailed questions into these broad categories:
- Do you or your colleagues know the journal?
- Can you easily identify and contact the publisher?
- Is the journal clear about the type of peer review it uses?
- Are articles indexed or archived in dedicated services?
- Is it clear what fees will be charged?
- Are guidelines provided for authors on the publisher website?
- Is the publisher a current member of a recognized industry initiative?
The editorial notes that predatory journals may fabricate indexing and citation metrics while some may get indexed after falling “through the cracks in the vetting process.”
Sometimes, “to lend a veneer of credibility,” authors are invited to sit on editorial boards or serve as guest editors, but sometimes people are listed in these roles without their consent, according to the editorial.
“Particularly vulnerable authors are those who are early in their careers, lack experience and adequate mentorship, and face pressure to publish,” says the editorial. “Publication in a predatory journal may result in financial and professional consequences that interfere with the ability to publish work in legitimate journals.”
Other harms include damaging the credibility of legitimate open source and author-pays journals while facilitating “the dissemination of unvetted, weak or even fraudulent health information.”
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Predatory journals explode
There were more than 15,000 predatory journals in 2021, according to an estimate cited in the editorial.
The estimate came from Cabells, a Beaumont, Texas, company specializing in journal research, which put the exact number at the time as 15,059. There were only 4,000 such predatory entities identified when the Cabells database was launched in 2017.
It is difficult to maintain a current list of predatory journals, says the consortium of scholarly publishers that launched the Think. Check. Submit website, so they recommend authors make use of the checklist mentioned above. Watchlists of predatory or unethical publishers are subjective and would be inconsistent with the campaign’s focus of encouraging authors to use the checklist criteria when assessing publishers.
Such lists “do not allow for nuance” and could negatively affect new publications that have not yet been subject to review, “while the absence of a journal or publisher from a watchlist does not guarantee that it is ethical.”
Taking legal action is difficult
Taking legal action against these predators is difficult, the editors wrote in their editorial, because “publishers are often ghost entities, contact persons can be difficult to identify and unresponsiveness to communication is common.”
The editors also noted how publish-or-perish pressures at some academic institutions can fuel the sustainability of predatory publishers.
“In some situations, authors under pressure to publish may knowingly choose to publish in suspect journals to build a long list of publications to support academic promotion,” the editorial says. “This strategy would not be as effective if academic promotion committees weigh not only the quantity but also the quality of publications and the journals in which they appear.”
