Working to eliminate predatory and fake journals
This web site, and the accompanying Twitter feed and blog, aims to raise awareness of Predatory Publishing. If you are unaware of what this is, it is where scientific publishers charge an article processing fee to enable you to publish your paper. However, unlike legitimate open access publishers, there is little (or no) peer review. This means that the scientific archive is being infected by papers that have not been subject to rigorous peer review. If this is allowed to continue this archive, which has taken hundreds of years to develop, is in real danger.
Predatory publishers also exhibit other traits such as sending spam emails to attract submission, their editorial boards may be non-existient and/or may not stand up to close scruiny and they may be untruthful about their affiliations with trade assocaitions and/or companies which maintain impact fators.
About Us
Our aim
We aim to eliminate predatory journals, and associated activities, from the scientific literature. This is no small task as these practices have proliferated over recent years and the number of papers and journals can now be counted in the thousands. The task is made even harder as there is evidence that some scholars knowingly publish in predatory journals in the mistaken belief that it can actually help their career. You might like to take a look at our article which discusses this – Why Do Authors Publish in Predatory Journals? So, we not only have to tackle the predatory publishers themselves, but we also have to educate those that are writing the papers. Not only to ensure that they can spot a predatory publisher but also to persuade them that publishing in predatory journals is a bad idea, not only for them, but it affects every other scholar.
Who are we?
We are often asked “Who are you?” At the moment, we are staying anonymous. We realise that this is an issue for some people, and we get that, but we are aware of the issues that Jeffrey Beall faced when he introduced the term “Predatory Publishing” and maintained a list of predatory journals and publishers. At some point, we will come clean, but we want to get a following before we do that so that, at least, we have some recognition from the community that we are trying to make a positive change in the sector where we make our living.
What qualifies us?
That is a good question, especially as we are not (at the moment) saying who we are. All we can say at the moment is that we are scholars ourselves, who publish regularly in (what we believe) high quality journals. High quality, in our world means journals that are listed in Web of Science, ISI journals to use a more commonly used phrased. We have also served as associate editors and editors-in-chief, so we have seen scientific publishing both as authors and as editors.