This web site has a mission to eliminate predatory journals and publishers. It is challenging task as there are more than 15,000 predatory journals and the revenue they earn their publishers can be counted in the millions of US dollars.
But what is so bad about predatory journals? In this article we provide a few thoughts. It is certainly not a complete list, but we feel that the comments we make are important.
Predatory journals infect the scientific archive
If a paper is published in a predatory journal, it is unlikely to have been robustly peer reviewed, if reviewed at all. This means that anybody, or any organisation, can publish anything and have it form part of the scientific archive. This is problematic for a number of reasons.
- Others may cite the papers that have been published in predatory journals, assuming that they are based on sound scientific procedures, when in fact nothing in the paper has been reviewed or verified.
- Researchers might use a predatory paper as a basis for their own research (standing on the shoulder of giants, and all that). They are actually wasting their time as the basis for their research assumptions would be invalid if they had been drawn from a predatory journal.
- Commercial organisations could publish research, which they later use in their marketing campaigns. The general public are being duped if this is done. Indeed, it could even endanger the general public.
- Researchers will add papers they publish in predatory journals to their CV. Promotion and employment panels may not realise that the research that is being presented is invalid and should be ignored.
The main issue though is that as these predatory papers are published, and get cited in legitimate journals, the scientific archive can no longer be trusted. The hundreds of years that we have been developing the scientific archive could be lost in a couple of decades and we may have to start again, or at least carry out a huge task of tidying it up.
Publishing in predatory journals harms your CV
We have previously written about how publishing in predatory journals can harm your CV, so we will not repeat all that information here.
We will emphasise that, as a scholar, your legacy is your CV and it will eventually come to light that you have been publishing in predatory journals. This might be after your death but if you consistently publish in predatory journals, your reputation, and legacy as a researcher, will eventually evaporate and you will be remembered for the wrong reasons, rather than being somebody who published in legitimate, high quality journals who made a contribution to the advancement of science.
Predatory journals takes money away from research
We would love to see some validated figures as to what the predatory publishing sector is worth, in terms of the revenue that it generates.
We have previously published an article about how much we believe one publisher generates in terms of revenue (we estimated USD 151,340) and, in another article, we estimated that the sector is worth USD 393 million, but that estimate has all sorts of assumptions.
The truth is nobody really knows what this sector is worth. It’s not as if we can go and get audited accounts from the publishers and do the calculations. The nature of predatory publishing is that their operations are opaque, they try and hide in the shadows and they want to operate behind anonymous email accounts, hide where their offices are, or even which countries they are operating from.
So, with all the warnings about calculating the size of the predatory publishing sector, in terms of revenue, what can we say about that revenue and what else it could be used for?
What is most likely missing out is funding research. Imagine if the hundreds of millions of dollars that are paid to predatory publishers could be used to fund research. Not only would it enable more research to be done but it would also provide an opportunity for researchers to access funding for their research. Moreover, it could employ a lot more people into academia sector, whether that is more PhD students, post-doctoral researchers or permanent members of staff.
Having more research carried out, or employing more people, to do more research, seems to be a much better use of the money that giving it to predatory publishers.
Final Remarks
We feel that is incumbent on the legitimate side of the academic sector to make a stance against predatory journals. Not only to stop the scientific archive being infected but also to ensure that money is spent in the right way, supporting scientific endeavors, rather than supporting predatory publishing. This is even more important when tax-payers money is being used as the funding source, which is often the case.
This stand against predatory publishers is also the responsibility of individual researchers, if nothing else to protect the quality of the CV, but also to protect the scientific archive which is something we all rely on.
