Category: Scientific Literature

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Do predatory publishers respect the scientific archive?

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There are certain standards that we expect from a scientific publisher, not only in how they conduct themselves but also in how they maintain the scientific archive.

As a publisher of a scientific journal, there are three important principles that must be respected. These are 1) ensuring that you have a robust peer review process, 2) once published the paper should NOT change and 3) the paper should be available forever with the SAME content as when it was originally published. If a paper is retracted, it should be done in the appropriate way and not simply deleted.

In this article, we touch upon these three elements that we would expect from a scientific publisher and question whether a predatory publisher is able to uphold these principles.

We start though, with some introductory remarks on the scientific archive.

Background

We can trace the scientific archive back to 1665, when two journals were started. The Journal des Sçavans was the first scientific journal, starting publishing in January 1665, with the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London following soon after in March 1665.

The Journal des Sçavans stopped publishing in 1792, during the French Revolution. Philosophical Transactions is still published today, making it the longest running scientific journal in existence.

The journal that first introduced peer review was the Medical Essays and Observations, which started publishing in 1731.

Since those early days, there has been a proliferation of scientific journals. Some would say that there are too many, with a 2018 University World News article saying:

“No one knows how many scientific journals there are, but several estimates point to around 30,000, with close to two million articles published each year.”

Predatory publishers and journals have added to this number with a 2015 paper (‘Predatory’ open access: a longitudinal study of article volumes and market characteristics) saying that the number of articles published in predatory journals had increased from 53,000 in 2010 to 420,000 articles in 2014. These articles were published by about 8,000 journals. Given that these figures were reported about six years ago, we can only assume that the figures are now a lot higher.

Peer Review

One of the pillars that supports the scientific archive is peer review. For a scientific paper, to become part of the archive it has to be reviewed by experts who recommend whether the research that is being reported should be accepted by the journal. In coming to a recommendation, the reviewers and editors will look at whether the research is reproducible, does it report something new, does it advance knowledge and are the results/conclusions in the paper correct and logically argued. The paper should also be rigorous in its approach, the research should be discussed in the context of previous research and the authors should act with integrity and follow ethical procedures. Only then can the paper be accepted into the scientific archive and be made available for future scholars and generations.

Peer review is an aspect of predatory publishing that is often seen as the most problematical. There is a suspicion that predatory publishers/journals are more interested in receiving article processing fees, than carrying out high quality peer review. Indeed, there is a concern that no peer review is conducted and sting operations have shown that predatory journals have very little peer review, if any at all.

Papers that have not been subject to strict peer review have no right to be part of the scientific archive. Not only does it result in research which has not been validated appearing in the archive, but other researchers may try and build on this work in their own research. This is not only a waste of time and energy but is also potentially dangerous. The results of the research could be used by pharmaceutical and construction companies, to name just two sectors, to develop drugs or as the basis for construction projects. If assumptions are made using results from non-peer reviewed papers, this could lead to very bad consequences. Of course, any company would validate the results themselves before investing in them, but, at best, they are wasting their time, and probably money.

Without a robust peer review system, the idea of “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants” is no longer credible as you cannot have any confidence in who the giants are and who is trying to impersonate giants.

A depressing consequence of the scientific archive becoming infected by predatory journals is that the archive falls into disrepute and/or every scholar has to go back to first principles for every paper they write which, of course, in totally unrealistic.

Papers that are published by a predatory journal, without proper peer review, are able to become part of the scientific archive, with the author being able to say anything. If you don’t believe this, this take a look at one of our previous articles, which should convince you that it is possible to publish literally anything. This is not only problematical from the “standing on the shoulders of giants” perspective but it also gives a route for companies to publish results and conclusions which have not been validated but which could be used by commercial organizations to promote goods and services. It must be tempting for some companies to publish their “results” in a predatory journal so that they can refer to them in their marketing material, demonstrating the worth of their product or service?

The paper should not change

A second important pillar in the context of the scientific archive is that the reader has the right to expect that what they read is exactly what the author wrote. As an example, if you consider the paper that described Garry Kasparov’s, the then world chess champion, defeat against Deep Blue, you know that you are reading what the three authors wrote. Not only was the paper peer reviewed, but you also know that the final camera-ready paper that was submitted is the same as the one that you can download.

If you compare this to, say, this blog post. You might read it and cite it in some way. After you cite it, we may edit the blog, changing it so that it no longer represents the reason that you cited it for. Indeed, it may be the case that the blog now represents a totally opposite viewpoint to the one that originally caught your attention.

It is even worse in areas such as Wikipedia pages (which is a great service it has to be said), which can be edited by anybody and those authors can be anonymous. So, not only can the text change from one week to the next but it can be edited by anybody; and sometimes, people have been known to edit Wikipedia pages in a way that totally misrepresents the topic under discussion.

Peer review for Wikipedia is undertaken by the “crowd”. That is anybody can validate the article and make corrections. This often (more often than not) leads to good quality information, but it cannot be relied upon for scientific papers.

In the context of the predatory journals, we suspect that most of the time, the final version of the paper that is submitted is the one that appears on their web site. But there is a slight unease that the paper could be changed and there is no way to check that.

For example, if the journal does not have a permalink system (such as using DOI’s) then it might be difficult to validate when the paper was assigned a permalink and on what date. We are not sure whether you can request this information from the organization who is managing the DOI but it should be possible if there is a major dispute. Having said that, most journals, even predatory ones, do use DOIs, which does give come semblance of the permanency of a paper. You might be interested in our article on DOI, which asks if a DOI is an indicator of quality?

Of perhaps more worry are those journals where it is difficult to find and/or contact an Editor-in-Chief. For most (all?) high quality journals they have an appointed Editor-in-Chief who is a recognized expert in the discipline addressed by the journal. For some predatory journals, they either do not have an Editor-in-Chief, there are no contact details or if you search for the person, they can be very difficult to find; let alone find a list of their publications.

Not having an Editor-in-Chief, or one that is very hard to contact, gives rise to concerns as to who is running and managing the journal. If the Editor-in-Chief is a recognized, high profile scholar then not only are they easy to find but they also have their own reputation to consider.

Having, or not, an Editor-in-Chief would obviously not be the reason for a paper to be changed after it is published but not having a recognized academic figure head for a journal is a concern as we cannot be sure who has overall responsibility for the academic integrity being maintained.

Available forever

A further pillar of scientific publications is that published papers should be available forever. The Deep Blue paper mentioned above is available now and will be for the foreseeable future.

Compare this to newspapers, which are a great source of information and are frequently cited, indeed, we have done so ourselves. The problem with newspapers though is twofold. Firstly, the articles are not peer reviewed, giving rise to the issues mentioned above. The second problem is that the article can be difficult to find if you want to access it. Many newspapers do have an archiving policy, but it is by no means standard and by no means available for every newspaper. If you cite a newspaper article, there is a high risk that a reader of your paper will not be able to access the article as there is no requirement on newspapers to make previous articles available.

The same is true, of course, of magazines, company reports etc. It is also true, to a certain extent, of books unless you are very careful with things such as editions, ISBN’s etc.

In the context of predatory publishers, there are examples where journals have been launched, published a number of volumes/issues/papers and then disappear without trace. There are also examples, often from sting operations, where papers have been accepted, published and then removed.

This is not the basis on which the scientific archive is built. If a paper is published in a peer reviewed journal, then that paper should be available for ever more, or at least a reference to it. If the paper does contain a mistake(s), or was published in error, then the paper should be retracted usual accepted practices, not just removed from the archive.

For example, if an error is found, then an Erratum should be published. This does not change the original paper, but is a note in a future issue of the journal about the error.

If a paper is to be retracted, it could be removed from the web site, but a place holder should remain, stating that the paper has been retracted. This means that anybody looking for that paper will know that it has been retracted. It should not simply be deleted.

Taylor & Francis, along with many have publishers, out what it means to correct or retract a paper.

Predatory publishers are not really concerned about ensuring that what they publish will be available forever. They will, and many do, maintain a web site which will contain all the papers that they have published. However, we feel that the commitment to maintain the integrity of the web site is possibly lacking. Whilst they are receiving papers (and money), the web site will be maintained, but what happens if a journal and/or publisher closes down, will the web site still be maintained?

Conclusion

This article has outlined three principles that are important when considering the integrity of the scientific archive.

Peer review is the main consideration with regard to predatory publishers, and is the procedure that is flouted most often.

However, maintaining the integrity of the archive also requires that papers are not changed after acceptance and that they should be available for ever. There are examples where papers published by a predatory journal are just deleted. These are often after a sting operation has been made public.

We are unaware of predatory journals changing papers once published but this, in our opinion, is a risk where there is a lack of transparency around the Editor-in-Chief.

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Why is predatory publishing evil?

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We thought we would draw out some of the reasons why we subscribe to the view that predatory journals and publishers should be avoided, rather than just expecting others to take this view at face value.

Publishing in predatory journals, and supporting the publishers that publish those journals, should be avoided. Saying that they are evil may be a little strong, but we can’t think of a better word to describe the practice of infecting the scientific archive with non-peer reviewed research.

As an evidence-based community, we would expect any argument that is put forward to be justified in some way and we hope that the reasons below will convince you that there is no justification for publishing in predatory journals.

Peer review

Peer review underpins the scientific archive. If we read something from the scientific archive, we know two things:

  1. The paper has been read by, and reviewed by, those who are experts in the discipline being addressed. We have confidence that others have looked at the paper and decided that this paper has made a contribution to knowledge and has advanced the field in some way.
  2. The paper we are reading is EXACTLY the same as the one that the author (finally) submitted. If a mistake was subsequently found then a correction would have had to have been made in a later paper, referred to as an erratum. Unlike, say, a blog post or a wikipedia entry, which can be changed after being published, you can be certain that a paper in the scientific archive is the same as was originally published.

The problem with predatory publishers is that there is no, or very little, peer review yet the papers that they publish become part of the scientific archive. This not only undermines the scientific process, as experts are not evaluating the papers, but it is infecting the scientific archive. If this infection penetrates too deeply, there will come a point where we can no longer trust the science that is being reported. We discuss this is a little more detail in the next section.

Infecting the scientific archive

What do we mean by infecting the scientific archive?

We draw an analogy with a virus, that attacks its host and gradually spreads, eventually killing the host. Assume that the scientific archive is the host. The purpose of the scientific archive is to store the peer reviewed research of all humankind in a way that there is confidence that anything that is referred to has been validated by experts in that area. There might be mistakes, which we hope will be found in the future, but the fact that every paper that is in the scientific archive has gone through a peer review process gives us a high level of confidence in the research that is stored in the archive.

Let’s say that a predatory journal comes into being. It starts to publish articles, which have not undergone the same rigorous peer review. To the uninformed, and even seasoned scholars, these journals/articles may look legitimate. Given that there is no overall management of the scientific archive, the papers that are published within this journal can now be viewed as being part of the archive. In effect, the scientific archive has been infected as it now contains material which has not been peer reviewed, at least to the levels that we would expect.

As more and more predatory journals are started, and articles get published, so the infection spreads.

“Ahhh“, you might say, “but if we find a paper that we know has been published in a non-predatory journal, we can trust that, right?“

Wrong. The research that is reported might be based on the ‘research’ from a predatory journal or the paper may cite papers from a predatory journal, which cannot be relied upon. Taking this to its logical conclusion, if predatory publishing is allowed to infect the scientific archive, then the archive will eventually be invalid as we will not be able to tell the difference between science that has been properly peer reviewed from the science that does not have this solid foundation. The host will inevitably die.

So, we must be careful when (what was) the healthy scientific archive starts to cite the predatory articles as the virus is really starting to take hold and it is now even harder, if not impossible, to get rid of the infection. Once credible journals start to cite predatory articles, how does the reader decide what is valid in the scientific archive? And, of course, it is in the interests of the predatory journals/articles to get cited, as it provides them with some validation that enables the virus to spread even further.

This infection has started already. Take a look at this article, or this one, both which note that predatory publishers have already infected citation databases and the scientific archive.

A virus will eventually kill its host and, if we do not eliminate predatory publishing, then it will eventually kill the scientific archive as we will not have any confidence in it. A major operation may be able to bring it back to life but the longer the virus is allowed to infect the host, the harder that operation becomes and we may to accept that the patient can never recover.

Profiteering

There is often discussion about the profits that traditional scientific publishers make. Or rather the discussion is often around what the publishers do for their money. Authors write the papers and other scientists review those papers. The authors do not receive payment for their work, nor do the reviewers. Indeed, the authors have to sign over the copyright to the publisher, who then publishes the paper and charges others to read that paper. Ironically, the author and reviewers may have to pay to read the paper they wrote or reviewed.

Many see this as profiteering, but predatory publishers take this to a new level. They take money from authors/institutions but provide hardly of the services that we would normally expect, such as a solid peer review process, a recognized editorial board, a well maintained web site, credibility as an established scientific publisher, printing and distributing the journal etc. It is for these reasons that traditional publishers would argue that they require the copyright and charge subscription fees as they have significant costs that they have to pay.

Predatory publishers are unlikely (if ever) to provide a hard copy of the journal, meaning that there are no print and distribution costs. They will not have the same level of editorial checks and balances that a non-predatory publisher would have, saving on the costs (typically staff) to provide those services. They are unlikely to have the same level of post-publication marketing so will not invest in social media, maintaining email lists for table of content alerts etc.

Really, all predatory publishers need to invest in is a web site, which is often of poor quality and email software to spam potential authors asking for papers. Customer support is non-existent and, although, we have no evidence to support this, we suspect that the staffing for any given predatory journal is one or two staff who use a variety of names that appear to be different people, performing different functions. Indeed, the same people may even service different predatory journals so a small number of staff may, using different names and represent many different predatory journals.

Undermining Open Access

When the open access model of publishing really took hold, in the late 1990’s/early 2000’s it was meant as a way that scientific research could be made available to the general public, as well as making it more accessible to those institutions that were not able to afford journal subscription fees or buy individual papers.

It was also felt that government funded research, which uses funds from the tax-payers, should be made available to those that funded that research. That is the general public.

As the open access movement gained momentum, unscrupulous publishers saw it as an opportunity to profit from this initiative (you can read about the difference Open Access publishing and predatory publishing here). Thus, they set up publishing houses and journals that would publish papers for a fee, but without the usual practices in place that we would expect to see from even the most low-quality journals.

If there are criticisms of the open access movement (and there are a few) one of them would be that predatory publishers have taken advantage of open access and it can be difficult to differentiate between legitimate open access journals and those that operate in a predatory way.

Conclusion

You would find it difficult to find somebody who would have a legitimate argument that predatory publishers and journals are a good thing. The publishers themselves might make an argument, even some authors might try and make a case, but we cannot think of any legitimate reason why any scholar would support a predatory journal. We have given a number of reasons why publishing in predatory journals is a bad idea. There are many more, but we hope that the reasons given above will persuade most people that publishing in predatory journals is a bad idea. If you are still not convinced, take a look at how publishing in predatory journals can harm your CV.

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Is Open Access the same as Predatory Publishing?

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Is open access the same as predatory publishing? The answer is no.

Most would agree that open access publishing is a good idea, but it does come with unintended consequences, with one of those being the rise of predatory publishers. This is something that the scientific community must deal with, else we run the risk of not being able to trust the scientific archive, which underpins almost everything we do in our role as researchers, scientists and scholars.

This article presents an overview of open access and predatory publishing. Then we consider the implications of predatory publishing and the danger it presents, not only to the scientific community, but also to an individual’s CV.

What is Open Access?

Before open access, when you wrote a scientific paper, you signed over the copyright to a publisher, who then generated income by selling the paper either by charging institutions or individuals a subscription or by charging a fee to access the article.

Open access gives you the opportunity to publish your scientific research in a way that makes it available to anybody who wishes to read it. That is, nobody has to pay to read your article. It is free to access.

In the open access model, the author, or their institution, pays to publish their article. These costs may also be covered by another body such as a learned society, research institute, funding body etc. This means that the publisher generates their income from the publication fees, rather than selling the article after it has been published. Authors and institutions may not be happy as they have to pay to publish their own papers, and may still have to subscribe to the journal, but that is a discussion for another article.

This model of open access, where you pay the publisher to publish your article, is known as “Gold Open Access“. There are other models, where you can still put your article online, you don’t pay, yet your article is still freely available. We will cover the various open access model in another article but this StackExchange post does a good job. You might prefer a book and we have found “Open Access (MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series)” a useful resource. We have also linked to a video (see below).

What is Predatory Publishing?

Predatory publishing is an unintended consequence of the open access movement.

Seeing an opportunity, some “publishers” (and we put publishers in quotes on purpose) have set up bogus journals which promises quick review times, fast publication times and generally make all sorts of claims about their editorial board, impact factors etc., many of which cannot be substantiated or verified. In truth, many of them are little more than works of fiction.

There is likely to be no peer review, the paper will not be checked in any way for quality, robustness, reproducibility; and many other aspects of scientific publishing that we would expect from a credible publisher. You submit an article, it is accepted, and you are expected to pay.

Moreover, the article is unlikely to get any citations and the paper will have no impact. To be frank, it is a good thing if papers published in predatory journals do not attract citations, as we do not want papers that have not been robustly peer reviewed to infect the scientific archive.

Predatory publishers are in it for the money. They just want you to send your article to them, they will publish it and charge you for the privilege.  More importantly, when other researchers read your paper they may not (will not) be aware that your paper is no better than a blog post (in fact, many blog posts are probably better) and will accept it with the same faith as they would for any other journal article. After all, this is what the scientific method is all about. It gives researchers confidence that what they are reading research has been reviewed by experts in that domain. In the case of predatory journal articles, this is not the case.

A word of caution. Some people might believe that publishing any paper is better than publishing no paper. This is not true and we have explained, in another article, how publishing in a predatory journal can harm your CV. We urge you to avoid predatory journals at all costs.

Implications of predatory publishing

The scientific method

The tension between open access and predatory publishing arises when a rogue publisher sees an opportunity to make money, without providing the usual services that would be expected from a traditional publisher.

Not only will predatory publishers make money for providing an unethical service, but the scientific method is not being respected. This is the process that researchers follow so that other researchers can have confidence in the papers that are published. If a paper is published in a scientific journal, it is assumed that the scientific method has been followed. It is a dangerous road if we no longer have confidence that the scientific method has been respected.

If you are interested in finding out more about the scientific method, you might want to take a look at “A Beginner’s Guide to Scientific Method (4th Edition)” (link to Amazon here).

The scientific archive

Another major issue is the infection of the scientific archive. If scientific papers are being accepted into the scientific archive, when the paper has not been through a robust peer review process, this not only undermines the scientific archive but is potentially dangerous.

If authors are making claims that are not substantiated (or at least not accepted through a rigorous peer review process), yet these papers are published it could lead to researchers, even the general public, applying these findings with potentially severe consequences. For example, if a medical procedure or a new drug is presented in a predatory journal, this might be applied to a patient with potentially fatal results (recognizing that other checks and balances are in place in medicine, but this is not true for all disciplines).

We are sure that no researcher would want that on their conscious, but this is the risk they are taking, and they should be under no illusion that they are potentially risking the lives of the general public. Even if their predatory paper is not directly responsible, others could build on your paper, which could lead to fatalities.

Your CV and your legacy

A paper published in a predatory journal has no scientific credibility. 

As academics, one of the most important things we have is our legacy which is, in large part, our scientific publication record. If your credibility as a scholar is called into question, how would you defend yourself if you have published in a predatory journal? Perhaps, more to the point, would you really want your legacy to be questioned after you had passed away and you do not have the opportunity to defend yourself?

In the short term, you may get another job based on your CV that includes predatory publications, you may even get promoted, but you are inevitably damaging both your career and your academic reputation. You might get away with it for years but, eventually, you will be exposed. This exposure may come after your academic career is over, perhaps, even after your death, but it will inevitably be recognized, and your other academic achievements are meaningless.

If you are tempted to publish in a predatory journal, in order to enhance your CV, you might want to take a look at one of our other articles which might persuade you that it will actually damage your CV, rather than enhance it.

Standing on the shoulders of giants

Another significant issue is that by publishing in a predatory journal, other researchers may develop this non-peer reviewed work, despite what the predatory journal may you believe about the high level of peer review. As a result, you may be wasting years of other researcher’s time if they try and develop your work, which is not founded on sound scientific principles, has not followed the scientific method and has not undergone robust peer review.

This is made even worse if some follow up work is published in a credible journal, which promotes the validity of the first article, even though it has not been validated by the scientific community. “Standing on the shoulders of giants” takes on a whole new meaning and might be better phrased as “Standing on the shoulders of fraudsters.”

If you are wondering where the phrase “Standing on the shoulders of giants” comes from, it has been first attributed to Bernard_of_Chartres, a 12th century French philosopher and scholar. Perhaps the more famous quote was from Isaac_Newton when he wrote to Robert Hooke in February 1676, saying “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.“

This phrase has now come to represent the scientific process of developing the work of others to make advances in science. The term has become so ingrained into the scientific literature that even Stephen Hawking used it in a book titled, “On the Shoulders of Giants: The Great Works of Physics and Astronomy” (Amazon link here), where he presents some of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time.

It has also been used by others, outside of science, such as in the book giving the history of the football club Manchester United.

Wherever the term came from, if you publish in a predatory journal, you are not standing on the shoulder of a giant. You are conning the academic community and paying for the privilege.

Conclusion

Open access is generally well received and seen as a good direction of travel for the dissemination of research, especially when that research has been paid for by the tax payer.

However the introduction of open access publishing has provided a business opportunity for unscrupulous individuals and companies (we are loathed to call them publishers) to exploit the academic community, This is done by setting up open access journals, where a payment is required to have a paper published.

The difference between open access and predatory publishing is the lack (or maybe even complete absence) of peer review, or any of the other features we would expect from a traditional journal. This leads to the scientific archive being infected and, if we do nothing to control it, this infection will spread and will ultimately make the scientific archive meaningless.