Twitter – Predatory Journals and Conferences

June 21, 2020March 14, 2021

Is there a good reason to publish in a predatory journal?

Disclosure: This page may contain affiliate links. This means, at no additional cost to you, we receive a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

In a recent Twitter poll we conducted, we asked “Is there any justifiable reason for publishing in a predatory journal?”, we received 56 responses with 86.8% (46 votes) saying that there was never a legitimate reason and 13.2% (7 votes) saying that there could be a legitimate reason.

We recognize that this is a small sample size and some people may have voted just to be controversial (Twitter polls are anonymous) but if we assume that 13.2% of the 5,433,853 scholars listed at OECD (see Table 1) believe that there could be a legitimate reason to publish in a predatory journal, that means that 717,266 scholars believe that they could justify publishing in a predatory journal. Even if we dropped the number to 5% of scholars, this would mean that 271,692 scholars felt that they had a justifiable reason to publish in a predatory journal.

Financial Analysis

If we extend this analysis a little further, and of the 717,266 (resp. 271,692) scholars who believe it was acceptable to publish in a predatory journal and, in any one year, 5% of them did, that would be 35,863 (resp. 5% of the 271,692 = 13,585) would publish a paper.

If we take an Article Processing Charge (APC) of $500, that means that $17,931,656 (resp. $6,792,294) has been taken away from funding legitimate research and has lined the pockets of the predatory publishers. We are not sure about you, but we feel that a lot of research could be done with 18 million dollars.

We realise that this is very superficial analysis, but it does give you some idea of the amounts of money that is being spent on predatory publishing. It is probably a lot more than that as we have not even considered the number of people that get persuaded by all the spam emails that gets sent.

In fact, in 2014 it was said that there were 420,000 predatory articles published (see “Predatory open access: a longitudinal study of article volumes and market characteristics“: DOI: 1 0.1186/s 12916-015-0469-2). At $500 per article that is 210 million dollars. The number of predatory articles published has probably risen since 2014.

Why would you publish in a predatory journal?

In one of our other blog posts (Why is predatory publishing evil?) we made the case that you should never submit to a predatory journal, yet the poll we conducted does not entirely agree with that view. We stand by the conclusion of our previous article but wonder why some scholars might feel that it is appropriate to publish in a predatory journal?

During the poll, and as a follow up when reporting the results (see Figure 2) we asked for the reasons why it was felt that it was okay to publish in a predatory journal. These are some of the reasons given.

“To demonstrate you can get literally anything published in them, and expose them. Other than that, nothing.” We actually found this refreshing. There have been a number of reports of sting operations, with a recent one that we particular like called “What’s the Deal with Birds” (see Figure 3). We would particularly encourage you to look at the Acknowledgements. It is worth accessing the paper just to read those.

“The fact that they exist means that they are exploiting a gap in the market.” This, of course, is the whole basis for predatory publishing, indeed any business. If there were not a gap in the market, then predatory publishing would not exist.

Unlike other businesses though, the gap in the market is an exploitative model. It preys on those that are either desperate to publish, or those that do not fully understand how scientific publishing really works and believes that their work is being peer reviewed and the articles actually have merit. Their articles may indeed have merit but this cannot be validated by submitting to a predatory publisher.

Moreover, once you have published in a predatory journal and later discovered that the article is not being read or cited, you have wasted the article, and your money, as it is unlikely that you will be able to withdraw it and submit it elsewhere.

“One possible barrier is individuals not being familiar with the English language.” If a paper is not peer reviewed, it means that anything can get published, no matter how good, or bad, the English is.

Even with legitimate journals, this is a problem. When we review papers (in our day job) we try not to say “The English must be improved” as this must be so demoralizing to the author if they have no way of doing this. Having said that, the English in a peer reviewed scientific paper must be of a good standard, so that the readers can understand it and so that the ambiguity is removed so that the work is reproducible.

If you have the money to pay the Article Processing Charges (APCs) for a predatory journal, we would suggest that the money would be better spent using an English editing service and then sending the paper to a traditional journal where there are no APCs.

However, we would warn against just using an English language service without acknowledging this in the paper. In “Is There a Role for Publication Consultants and How Should Their Contribution be Recognized?“, the authors provide advice and guidance about using an editor. One of the reasons given (and there are many) is that the readers have a right to know whether the English, as written, is solely down to the author(s) as the level of English might be used for decisions such as promotion and hiring.

“Lack of resources for academics to undertake sophisticated research (this has to be an issue in some countries.” We agree that this is an issue, but it is still not a good reason to submit papers to predatory journals. Indeed, even scholars working in the same country will face variations of this issue. If you are working in a university which is not as well funded as universities in the same country, or where your School/Faculty is not so well funded as others, you will face a variation of this issue. But, this is not a reason to submit to a predatory journal.

It does lead to the question, “So how can I do the research I want to do?” The simple answer is you may not be able to. If you need access to some specific equipment, but don’t have that access, then you can’t do that research. Of course, you could try and collaborate, write a grant proposal, beg, borrow or steal (actually don’t steal), but if the resource is not available, you cannot do the research.

You may need to be realistic about the research that you are able to do and reframe it, so that you can carry out high quality research that is possible within your own capabilities and resources. It might be a difficult choice to change your research area, but this is much more preferable to submitting inferior research to predatory journals. This can only damage your CV, as we discuss in “Will publishing in predatory journals harm your CV?“.

Are there other reasons?

In addition to the reasons given in response to our Twitter poll, there are other reasons why some researchers will feel that it is justifiable to publish in predatory journals.

One of the most frequently given reasons is that we now operate in a publish or perish world and if you don’t publish, then getting another job, getting promoted or even just meeting key performance indicators for an annual appraisal is difficult. We understand this but (again) these are not justifiable reasons to publish in predatory journals.

In fact, the blame should not be put at the door of the publish or perish world. We work in an ever more competitive world and that will increase year-on-year, but having to work ever harder to stay still (the so called red queen effect) is no reason to find ways to circumvent accepted practices, by publishing in predatory journals. You should still focus on quality, not quantity.

The reason that some resort to predatory journals is because they can get away with it. Much of the fault lies with promotion and hiring panels, and those carrying out annual appraisals. It is no longer possible to take CVs at face value. We must check if a CV contains articles published in predatory journals, and call people out on it.

If candidates believe that their articles appearing in predatory journals will be discovered, and held against them, they might think twice about spending the money on a predatory journal, as it would be wasted money. Indeed, it might even be seen as a negative when a hiring or promotion panel asks about it. Not only have you wasted money, but the fact that you have wasted that money will be the reason why you don’t get the job will be a double slap in the face. It is suddenly not worth publishing in predatory journals.

Another reason that is often given is general ignorance. We can accept this, to a certain extent as you don’t know what you don’t know. But others do know. Colleagues you work with, your PhD supervisor, your mentor, people you meet at conferences, even the person/funding body who is paying the APC, may have a view and be able to offer advice and guidance.

We could forgive publishing in a predatory journal once (though we would hate to think that we are lining the pockets of predatory publishers), through ignorance, but your peers, mentors, colleagues, friends; even enemies, should tell you and explain the problems in publishing in a predatory journal. It is beholden on all of us to “have the back” of all those who are publishing their research.

Conclusion

We have said it before, and we say it again. There is never a good reason to publish in a predatory journal. You should not do it.

The only reason when it might be appropriate is for a sting operation, just to prove that the journal is predatory. Even this wastes somebody’s money and gives the predatory publisher some revenue. It could also be argued that you would be better off spending your time writing a legitimate journal article. But, if a sting operation means exposing a journal for what it is, then we would be supportive of doing this. But, ultimately, we want to get to a position where predatory publishers wither on the vine and go out of business.

But, the take home message from this article is that you should never submit to a predatory journal.

Table 1: Number of scholars listed by OECD (https://dx.doi.org/10.1787/6a32426b-en, last accessed 17 Jun 2020)
Country	Number of Scholars
AUT	59,911
BEL	31,069
BRA	445,514
CAN	172,490
CHE	34,446
COL	146,481
CRI	11,050
CZE	18,685
DEU	407,132
DNK	17,215
ESP	167,063
EST	4,209
FIN	14,893
FRA	120,152
GBR	156,295
GRC	18,968
HUN	24,119
IRL	9,651
ITA	91,291
JPN	224,124
KOR	219,598
LTU	12,148
LUX	954
LVA	7,022
MEX	387,391
NLD	68,710
NOR	33,176
NZL	16,834
POL	95,739
PRT	33,160
RUS	597,067
SVK	12,204
SVN	7,178
SWE	34,710
TUR	151,763
USA	1,581,424
Total	5,433,835

Acknowledgements

The header image is adapted from https://www.flickr.com/photos/number7cloud/33301620478 under Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)

February 8, 2020March 14, 2021

Why would a predatory publisher waive its publication fees?

Disclosure: This page may contain affiliate links. This means, at no additional cost to you, we receive a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

There are many reasons why a predatory publisher/journal would waive its Article Processing Charge (APC) – a fee it charges to publish your paper. The reasons may include it being a new journal, they are trying to validate your email address, they want to get recognized names to be a part of the journal or to enhance their editorial board.

In this article we discuss these reasons, and a few others, as to why a predatory journal might waive its article processing charges.

Motivation for this article

We recently received a tweet from somebody asking us what the catch is with an email they received, which appeared to be from a predatory journal (ES Journal of Ophthalmology), yet the journal was offering to waive its article processing charge. The tweet can be seen at this link.

https://twitter.com/mhthaung/status/1216792095773593600

If you look at the tweet, you will see that the email states “Complete Waiver on Processing Charges. We do not charge anything for your submission”. The question was put to us about what the catch is. The responses to the tweet provide some views, including some of our own, but we have been thinking about other reasons since we saw that tweet and we explore these in this article.

Is it a predatory journal?

Before we look at the reasons why a predatory journal, might waive its article processing charges, we ought to decide if we think the journal mentioned in the tweet is a predatory journal.

Drawing on our article “Three quick ways to spot a predatory journal”, we make the following comments/observations:

The journal promises very fast review times: On the web site, it actually says that reviewing will take 4-6 weeks. This is actually reasonable. It is quick for many established journals, but it does give the impression that they are serious about getting reviews, although seeing the quality of the reviews would be helpful.
The journal promises very fast publication times: The journal does not give any information about this, other than to say “the publication process would be chosen relying on the quality of the paper.” We know that this is not particularly helpful. We do note that the journal has yet to publish any papers, so there is nothing we can look at to validate the publication time.
Validate the editorial board: We took a couple of people listed as being members of the editorial board. This is what we found:

We looked up Mandeep Tomar, Department of ophthalmology, Dr. Yashwant Singh Parmar Government Medical Colleg, India (yes, the ‘e’ is missing off college). We chose this person as they were at the top of the list.

If you go to the staff page (accessed 06 Feb 2020) of Dr. Yashwant Singh Parmar Government Medical College, no person with this name exists. The screen shot shows just the Department of Ophthalmology. Only two people are listed, with neither being “Mandeep Tomar”.
We next looked at S Karkuzhali, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Anna University, India. We chose this person as their department seemed a little strange (i.e. Computer Science and Engineering).
If you go to their staff pages (accessed 06 Feb 2020) there is no mention of S Karkuzhali on any of their pages.

It is important that we point out that we are not questioning these two researchers. It is the journal that appears to be at fault in not providing full details, or links, to members of their editorial board. Indeed, the two researchers listed above might be unaware that they are listed on the web site.

We also took the opportunity to look at some other aspects of the journal. It does not fill us with confidence. For example:

The Articles in Press, Current Issue, Archive and Special Issue links all lead to pages which say “Will be updated soon …” This suggests that the journal has not published anything yet, which supports our view that they are willing to waive their fees to get a few papers to publish, which they can then leverage off.
There are grammatical errors on the web site, as well as links which do not lead anywhere. For example:
- On the home page, the links to “Cover Letter“, “Join as an Editor” and “Join as a Reviewer” all lead nowhere. The link is https://www.escientificlibrary.com/ophthalmology/index.php#, which just links to the same page, i.e. the home page of the journal.
- On the home page it says “We accept the process and publish the research in its most appropriate manner ‘Peer-reviewed’ by our highly-qualified editorial team members” (we are unsure what is meant by ‘We accept the process”)
- On the home page it says “Compaining the scholarly articles for Citations” (we are not sure what is meant by ‘compaining’)
- On the home page it says “eScientific International Open Library articles are free accessible across the globe“. It should be ‘freely’

That may not sound like too many issues but this is just on a home page which is quite small. If we can find so many issues on a small home page, what does that say about the quality of the journal?

Journal starting up

If a journal is new it may seem value in attracting articles, rather than fees; at least in the first instance. A journal can hardly refer to its success if it has only published a few articles, or even zero. However, if they get a few articles, or even issues, published it suddenly has a track record that it can leverage on to attract more, fee paying, articles.

If a suspected predatory publisher is offering to waive its fees, you might want to look at the archive to see how established the journal is.

In the case of this ES Journal of Ophthalmology, they have yet to publish any articles, so this could be their way of populating their first issue and then go after fee paying papers?

Appear to be a traditional journal

Traditional journals do not charge an open access fee, as they ask you to sign over the copyright and they make their money by subscriptions to the journal or direct sales of an individual article. Of course, many traditional publishers now offer an open access route, but at least there is still an opportunity to publish papers for “free” if you are unable/unwilling to pay the open access fee.

By not having any article processing charges, at least in the short term, might make you think that the journal is from a traditional publisher. You might then be more inclined to publish in that journal again, even if it now charges an APC.

Get credible names on papers

Another reason why certain authors might be targeted for a fee waiver, is so that the journal gets well known authors to publish in their journals. This will be seen, by some, as a reason to publish in the journal on the basis that if somebody they know has published in the journal, the journal must be credible.

Others may not been given a fee waiver but might argue (to themselves) that the article processing charge is unfortunate but as somebody they know has published in the journal, and they respect that person, it is a good journal to publish in, depite the cost.

Impersonating another journal

Although not specially about waiving fees, some journals may be trying to cause confusion as to which journal you are submitting to. If they are able to create confusion, it could attract a submission, which meets their aim of populating the journal with initial content.

As an example, we searched for “Journal of Ophthalmology” and the serach returned the following in the top set of hits:

We note that the journal that we have mentioned in this article, that is the “ES Journal of Ophthalmology“, does not appear in (at least) the top ten hits.

We should add that we have not looked at these journals in detail, nor is the list complete, so we are not in a position to make any comment about whether they are predatory journals or not. However, we are sure that there will be a mixture.

In future articles, we plan to look at sets of journals, for different disciplines and compare them by various criteria.

Attract authors from different countries

Many predatory journals tend to attract papers from a certain region in the world, or even a single country. Inviting authors to publish for free would be a way of trying to broaden the authorship so that it makes the journal look more international.

Enhance their editorial board

Inviting somebody to publish in their journal, fee free, might just be a way of starting a conversation which will lead to an invite to sit on their editorial board. If they can get a recognized name as a member of their editorail baord, it is probably of even more benefit than that name being an author.

However, there are many examples of where predatory journals just list members as part of the editorial board, without actually asking them.

Ask you to edit a special issue

Predatory journals may ask you to edit a special issue of a journal, and give you a fee waiver. The benefits to the journal are obvious. They get somebody to do all the work, even better if the guest editor is well known, and they get a number of papers for which they will receive fees.

It is interesting to note that the guest editor is unlikely to be paid for their efforts, but that is a discussion for another day.

Loss leader for the future

This item really sums up everything we have been saying above. Offering to publish a paper(s) for free could be a loss leader for the future. It populates the journal, it gets recognized names to publish in the journal, it broadens the authorship etc. Like supermarkets, they offer a product which loses them money, in the hope they will get a return on that investment somewhere down the line.

Conclusion

In this article we have suggested several reasons why predatory journals may offer you a fee waiver. These range from getting initial content, building a live email list and trying to give the journal credibility by attracting well known authors.

As we show above, by a very quick Google search, there is no lack of journals for a given area (in the case of our search; Ophthalmology) so there is little excuse to send an article to a predatory journal.

Just so that our advice is clear, you should NOT publish in a predatory journal. It really is a bad strategy, as we discuss in one of our other articles.