Advertisement

Scientometrics

, Volume 116, Issue 1, pp 255–273 | Cite as

Is predatory publishing a real threat? Evidence from a large database study

  • Marcelo S. Perlin
  • Takeyoshi Imasato
  • Denis Borenstein
Article
First Online:

Abstract

Using a database of potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access journals, the objective of this research is to study the penetration of predatory publications in the Brazilian academic system and the profile of authors in a cross-section empirical study. Based on a massive amount of publications from Brazilian researchers of all disciplines during the 2000–2015 period, we were able to analyze the extent of predatory publications using an econometric modeling. Descriptive statistics indicate that predatory publications represent a small overall proportion, but grew exponentially in the last 5 years. Departing from prior studies, our analysis shows that experienced researchers with a high number of non-indexed publications and PhD obtained locally are more likely to publish in predatory journals. Further analysis shows that once a journal regarded as predatory is listed in the local ranking system, the Qualis, it starts to receive more publications than non-predatory ones.

Keywords

Predatory journals Scholarly publishing Open access Lattes platform 

Mathematics Subject Classification

00-01 99-00 
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

References

  1. Abbasi, K. (2012). The debate around open-access publishing. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 105, 185.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  2. Abramo, G., Cicero, T., & DAngelo, C. A. (2015). Should the research performance of scientists be distinguished by gender? Journal of Informetrics, 9(1), 25–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  3. Al-Khatib, A. (2016). Protecting authors from predatory journals and publishers. Publishing Research Quarterly, 32(4), 281–285.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  4. Beall, J. (2012). Predatory publishers are corrupting open access. Nature, 489(7415), 179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  5. Beall, J. (2013). Medical publishing triage-chronicling predatory open access publishers. Annals of Medicine and Surgery, 2(2), 47–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  6. Beall, J. (2015a). Criteria for determining predatory open-access publishers. http://publica.upc.edu/sites/default/files/arxius_site/criteris_editorials_fraudulentes.pdf. Accessed 5 May 2017.
  7. Beall, J. (2015b). Predatory journals and the breakdown of research cultures. Information Development, 31(5), 473–476.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  8. Beall, J. (2017). What i learned from predatory publishers. Biochemia Medica: Biochemia Medica, 27(2), 273–278.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  9. Berger, M., & Cirasella, J. (2015). Beyond Beall’s list better understanding predatory publishers. College and Research Libraries News, 76(3), 132–135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  10. Bowman, J. D. (2014). Predatory publishing, questionable peer review, and fraudulent conferences. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 78(10), Article 176.Google Scholar
  11. Brooks, C., Fenton, E. M., & Walker, J. T. (2014). Gender and the evaluation of research. Research Policy, 43(6), 990–1001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  12. Brostrm, G. (2017). glmmML: Generalized linear models with clustering. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=glmmML, r package version 1.0.2.
  13. Butler, D. (2013). The dark side of publishing. Nature, 495(7442), 433.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  14. Clark, A. M., & Thompson, D. R. (2016). Five (bad) reasons to publish your research in predatory journals. Journal of Advanced Nursing.  https://doi.org/10.1111/jan.13090.Google Scholar
  15. Djuric, D. (2015). Penetrating the omerta of predatory publishing: The Romanian connection. Science and Engineering Ethics, 21(1), 183–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  16. Frandsen, T. F. (2017). Are predatory journals undermining the credibility of science?A bibliometric analysis of citers. Scientometrics.  https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2520-x.Google Scholar
  17. Gujarati, D. N. (2009). Basic econometrics. New York: Tata McGraw-Hill Education.Google Scholar
  18. Haug, C. (2013). The downside of open-access publishing. New England Journal of Medicine, 368(9), 791–793.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  19. Kulczycki, E. (2017). The rise of predatory journals: The case of Dr. Anna fraud. NAUKA, 1(3), 71–83.Google Scholar
  20. Laakso, M., Welling, P., Bukvova, H., Nyman, L., Björk, B. C., & Hedlund, T. (2011). The development of open access journal publishing from 1993 to 2009. PLoS ONE, 6(6), e20,961.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  21. Lukić, T., Blešić, I., Basarin, B., Ivanović, B. L., Milošević, D., & Sakulski, D. (2014). Predatory and fake scientific journals/publishers: A global outbreak with rising trend: A review. Geographica Pannonica, 18(3), 69–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  22. Manca, A., Martinez, G., Cugusi, L., Dragone, D., Dvir, Z., & Deriu, F. (2017a). The surge of predatory open-access in neurosciences and neurology. Neuroscience, 353, 166–173.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  23. Manca, A., Martinez, G., Cugusi, L., Dragone, D., Mercuro, G., & Deriu, F. (2017b). Predatory open access in rehabilitation. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 98(5), 1051–1056.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  24. Nwagwu, W. E. (2016). Open access in the developing regions: Situating the altercations about predatory publishing/l’accès libre dans les régions en voie de développement: Situation de la controverse concernant les pratiques d’édition déloyales. Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science, 40(1), 58–80.Google Scholar
  25. Omobowale, A. O., Akanle, O., Adeniran, A. I., & Adegboyega, K. (2014). Peripheral scholarship and the context of foreign paid publishing in nigeria. Current Sociology, 62(5), 666–684.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  26. Perlin, M. (2017). Predatory: Tools for detecting predatory publishers and journals. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=predatory, r package version 1.2.
  27. Perlin, M. S., Santos, A. A., Imasato, T., Borenstein, D., & Da Silva, S. (2017). The Brazilian scientific output published in journals: A study based on a large cv database. Journal of Informetrics, 11(1), 18–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  28. Piro, F. N., Aksnes, D. W., & Rrstad, K. (2013). A macro analysis of productivity differences across fields: Challenges in the measurement of scientific publishing. JASIST, 64, 307–320.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  29. Pyne, D. (2017). The rewards of predatory publications at a small business school. Journal of Scholarly Publishing, 48(3), 137–160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  30. Rørstad, K., & Aksnes, D. W. (2015). Publication rate expressed by age, gender and academic position-a large-scale analysis of Norwegian academic staff. Journal of Informetrics, 9(2), 317–333.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  31. Shen, C., & Björk, B. C. (2015). ’Predatory’ open access: A longitudinal study of article volumes and market characteristics. BMC Medicine, 13(1), 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  32. Shuva, N. Z., & Taisir, R. (2016). Faculty members perceptions and use of open access journals: Bangladesh perspective. IFLA Journal, 42(1), 36–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  33. Sorokowski, P., Kulczycki, E., Sorokowska, A., & Pisanski, K. (2017). Predatory journals recruit fake editor. Nature, 543, 481–483.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  34. Strielkowski, W. (2017). Predatory publishing: What are the alternatives to beall’s list? The American Journal of Medicine. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002934317311968.
  35. Van Noorden, R. (2013). Brazilian citation scheme outed. Nature, 500(7464), 510–1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  36. Wallace, F. H., & Perri, T. J. (2018). Economists behaving badly: Publications in predatory journals. Scientometrics.  https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2690-1.Google Scholar
  37. Xia, J. (2015). Predatory journals and their article publishing charges. Learned Publishing, 28(1), 69–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  38. Xia, J., Harmon, J. L., Connolly, K. G., Donnelly, R. M., Anderson, M. R., & Howard, H. A. (2015). Who publishes in “predatory” journals? Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 66(7), 1406–1417.  https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23265.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Copyright information

© Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary 2018

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Escola de AdministraçãoPorto AlegreBrazil

Personalised recommendations

Cite article

Buy options