In May 2020, Kyle Siler wrote an article for the LSE Impact Blog. The article, titled “There is no black and white definition of predatory publishing“, as the title suggests, said that there is no agreed definition of predatory publishing.
Although this article was written almost two and a half years ago, we believe that the central point made by Kyle remains true to this day.
Other views
We all have a gut feeling what predatory publishing is. For us, it is journals that charge APC’s (Article Processing Charges), provide little (if any) peer review and accept almost any (if not all) papers that are submitted to them.
To others, the definition might be more aligned with fake journals. That is those journals that try to pass themselves off as another journal in an attempt to con the author into believing that they are submitting to a journal that they know and trust.
Others might consider predatory publishing as the practice of when a legitimate publisher rejects a paper, they offer to transfer the paper to another of their journals which, often (invariably), are open access journals. The cynical amongst us might argue that if a publisher is not happy to accept a paper into a journal in its portfolio, then why would they offer to consider it for another of its journals?
… and the list goes on as to what people might want to include in their definition of predatory publishing.
The Nature view
In a 2019 Nature paper, it was reported that after 12 hours of discussion, 18 questions and three rounds, an agreed definition of predatory publishing was reached. This was given as:
“Predatory journals and publishers are entities that prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship and are characterized by false or misleading information, deviation from best editorial and publication practices, a lack of transparency, and/or the use of aggressive and indiscriminate solicitation practices.”
We would agree with the points that this definition raises but this definition has not been widely adopted (in our view anyway) as we do not see it being used in the many papers on predatory publishing that have been published since 2019.
Our own definition
In a previous articles of ours, we tried to define the term predatory publishing. We said:
“Predatory publishing is the practice of publishers/journals charging fees to publish scientific articles, yet not providing the services that would normally be expected of a scientific journal. This includes not having robust peer review, thus not ensuring the quality and integrity of the papers which will form part of the scientific archive. Moreover, predatory journals may not have an editorial board. Even if they do, the members may not be recognized experts in the discipline being addressed by the journal, they may not make independent decisions and may be influenced by financial considerations.“
On reflection, this definition is, perhaps, a little long-winded but our previous article also showed many other definitions that scholars have proposed in the past.
So what is the definition of predatory publishing?
Despite many attempts at defining what predatory publishing is (and isn’t) there is still no single agreed phrase that is everybody’s go to phrase when they wish to define predatory publishing.
To be honest, we do not think that there will ever be one phrase that is accepted by everybody. This is not because of any malice but simply that predatory publishing means different things to different people and a single, concise phrase cannot capture everybody’s feelings and views.
Indeed, there are many facets to predatory publishing and, perhaps, we need to identify the various types of unethical publishing (as we called it in a previous article) rather than just trying to capture everything in a single term.
Header image Credit: Wikimedia Commons