Throughout December 2022, under the guise of an advent calendar, we have been listing the most highly cited papers that have addressed predatory publishing.
You can see the tweets that we made here, but we thought it worthwhile recording these papers in this article as some people may find it easier to access it in this way.
How were the papers selected?
We recognize that there are many ways that we could have selected the papers that made the final list. Therefore the papers in the list should be seen as indicative of the most highly cited paper and if this motivates others to search for papers on predatory publishing, then we see that as a good thing.
The data collection was carried out on 22 November 2022 and we searched for paper that had “Predatory Publishing”, “Predatory Journals” or “Predatory Publisher” in article titles.
You can read more about the data collection at another article we published which looked at which journals publish papers on predatory publishing.
Once we have completed the search, we sorted the list by the number of citations and took the top 24. This si what we used in our advent calendar posts, starting with the lowest number of citations (actually the 24th most cited) on 1 December 2022 and finishing on the 24th December 2022, with the most cited papers.
In the list below, we reverse that ordering, so the most cited paper is listed first.
The 24 most highly cited papers on Predatory Publishing
- Predatory publishers are corrupting open access (2012). Nature 489(7415):179. 489 citations. Access paper via https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/489179a
- Who publishes in “predatory” journals? (2015). Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 66(7):1406-1417. 219 citations. Access paper via https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asi.23265
- Predatory journals: no definition, no defence (2019). Nature 576(7786):210-212. 199 citations. Access paper via https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03759-y
- Firm action needed on predatory journals (2015). BMJ (Online) 350. 156 citations. Access paper via https://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.h210
- What I learned from predatory publishers (2017). Biochemia Medica 27(2):273-278. 139 citations. Access paper via https://dx.doi.org/10.11613/BM.2017.029
- Predatory journals recruit fake editor (2017). Nature 543(7646):481-483. 138 citations. Access paper via https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/543481a
- Beyond Beall’s list: Better understanding predatory publishers (2015). College and Research Libraries News 76(3):132-135. 120 citations. Access paper via https://dx.doi.org/10.5860/crln.76.3.9277
- Predatory journals: Who publishes in them and why? (2018). Journal of Informetrics 12(4):1296-1311. 95 citations. Access paper via https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2018.10.008
- Science for sale: The rise of predatory journals (2014). Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 107(10):384-385. 92 citations. Access paper via https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0141076814548526
- Why do authors publish in predatory journals? (2018). Learned Publishing 31(2):141-147. 91 citations. Access paper via https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/leap.1150
- What is a predatory journal? A scoping review (2018). F1000Research 7. 90 citations. Access paper via https://dx.doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.15256.1
- The false academy: predatory publishing in science and bioethics (2017). Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 20(2):163-170. 84 citations. Access paper via https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11019-016-9740-3
- Predatory journals: Ban predators from the scientific record (2016). Nature 534(7607):326. 80 citations. Access paper via https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/534326a
- Predatory publishing, questionable peer review, and fraudulent conferences (2014). American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 78(10):1-6. 76 citations. Access paper via https://dx.doi.org/10.5688/ajpe7810176
- Predatory publishing is just one of the consequences of gold open access (2013). Learned Publishing 26(2):79-84. 76 citations. Access paper via https://dx.doi.org/10.1087/20130203
- Dangerous predatory publishers threaten medical research (2016). Journal of Korean Medical Science 31(10):1511-1513. 74 citations. Access paper via https://dx.doi.org/10.3346/jkms.2016.31.10.1511
- India’s scientific publication in predatory journals: Need for regulating quality of Indian science and education (2016). Current Science 111(11):1759-1764. 70 citations. Access paper via https://dx.doi.org/10.18520/cs/v111/i11/1759-1764
- Best practices for scholarly authors in the age of predatory journals (2016). Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England 98(2):77-79. 70 citations. Access paper via https://dx.doi.org/10.1308/rcsann.2016.0056
- Problems and challenges of predatory journals (2018). Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology 32(9):1441-1449. 64 citations. Access paper via https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jdv.15039
- Are predatory journals undermining the credibility of science? A bibliometric analysis of citers (2017). Scientometrics 113(3):1513-1528. 63 citations. Access paper via https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2520-x
- A walk on the wild side: ‘Predatory’ journals and information asymmetries in scientific evaluations (2019). Research Policy 48(2):462-477. 63 citations. Access paper via https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2018.04.013
- Time to stop talking about ‘predatory journals’ (2018). Learned Publishing 31(2):181-183. 63 citations. Access paper via https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/leap.1135
- The extent of South African authored articles in: Predatory journals (2017). South African Journal of Science 113(44780). 54 citations. Access paper via https://dx.doi.org/10.17159/sajs.2017/20170010
- Knowledge and motivations of researchers publishing in presumed predatory journals: A survey (2019). BMJ Open 9(3). 54 citations. Access paper via https://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2018-026516