We are sometimes asked what was the first predatory journal and when was it published? It is not easy to track this information down, so we had to do a little digging. This article, provides the answer, well, as far as we know. If we have it wrong, we’d be delighted to be corrected so, if you know different, please tell us.
The first predatory journal was the Journal of Biological Sciences, which was first published by ANSInet in January 2001. To arrive at this conclusion the 18 publishers that were analyzed by Jeffrey Beall in four papers that he published between 2009 and 2012 were considered. These 18 publishers were publishing 1,328 journals when Beall carried out his analysis.
If you are reading this, you have probably heard of predatory publishing. If not, take a look at our article titled What is Predatory Publishing? | … and should you care?
The Publishers
In an attempt to identify the first predatory journal, we look at four of Jeffrey Beall’s paper. It was Beall that introduced the term predatory publishing. and in four papers that he published between 2009 and 2012, he looked at 18 publishers, critiquing each one.
In this article, we consider 17 of those publishers. Although Beall analyzed 18 publishers, 17 of them were categorized as predatory, with one of the categorized as non-predatory.
AOSIS Open Journals, was categorized by Beall as a legitimate open access publisher. In his 2012 article he said “Unlike the other four publishers covered in this review, AOSIS is a legitimate Open Access publisher.” Just for completeness we had a look at some of their journals and noted one that was first published in 1980 (South African Family Practice), and there may be some that were earlier. This journal predates any of the others we have been able to identify in this article, but we now ignore this publisher as it was not identified by Beall as being predatory.
You may be interested in reading more about Beall’s first paper on predatory publishing or reading about predatory publishing, which contains more details about Beall’s first four papers.
1. Academic Journals
Academic Journals publishes about 100 journals. We looked at a few of their journals and saw one that one was first published in January 2005 (the journal is the African Annals of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery).
We could not look through every journal, there are just too many, so we did a search by year, limiting the search to just the publishers domain. We used a Google search of the following form:
site:https://academicjournals.org/ 2005We started at 2005 and went backwards until we stopped seeing journals being returned in the search results. The journals in Table 1 were the ones that were returned in the search results for 2002.
| Journal | First Published |
| African Journal of Biotechnology | Nov 2002 |
| Journal of the Kenya Counselling and Psychological Association | Never published |
| African Journal of Oral Health Sciences | Dec 2016 |
| Journal of Philosophy and Culture | Dec 2004 |
| Journal of Land Management and Appraisal | Jun 2017 |
It is strange that journals not published in 2002 were returned in the search results, but this, we assume, is a function of the way the web site is indexed. But it does look as if the African Journal of Biotechnology is the first journal published by Academic Journals.
2. Academic Journals, Inc
We were unable to locate this publisher, so cannot check when they started publishing. Referencing Beall’s article, where he carried out his initial analysis, he mentioned that the journals’ content is listed on sci-alert.net, but this domain was not reachable.
3. Academy Publish
The URL that was provided by Jeffrey Beall no longer works and search for the publisher did not yield any useful results, so we are unable to find out when this publisher started publishing.
We did find a Facebook page, but this has not been updated since 2011.
We did track down one of the journals mentioned by Beall (The Journal of Computer and Information Technology). This journal appears to have its own web site, which makes no reference to Academy Publish. This journal was first published in 2010 and we believe that this is when Academy Publish started publishing.
4. ANSInet
In Beall’s original analysis, this publisher was referred to as ANSINetwork, but their web site now refers to ANSInet, which is the terminology we use here.
The search methodology that we used for other journals (i.e. limiting the search to the web site and moving back through the years) did not return reusable results on this occasion.
Fortunately, the page which lists the journals, also shows the current Volume and Issue number. There were three journals that are currently publishing volume 20 and seven journals that are publishing volume 19.
All three journals that are currently publishing Volume 20 (shown in Table 2) were first published in 2001. The seven journals that are currently publishing Volume 19 all started publishing in 2002. Therefore, it is safe to assume that ANSInet first started publishing in 2001.
| Journal | First Published |
| Journal of Applied Sciences | 2001 |
| Journal of Biological Sciences | Jan 2001 |
| Journal of Medical Sciences | Jan-Feb 2001 |
With reference to Table 2, Volume 1, Issue 1 of The Journal of Applied Sciences was published in 2001. No month is given on the papers. It published four issues in 2001. We assume that they were published in Mar, Jun, Sep, Dec, rather than Jan, Apr, Jul, Oct, just so that we are erring on the side of caution.
It is also interesting to note that in 2001, the PDF’s of the papers showed the journal’s name as the Pakistan Journal of Applied Sciences.
The Journal of Biological Sciences published 12 issues in 2001, so it is reasonable to assume that they started publishing in January 2001.
On the papers for Volume 1, Issue 1 of The Journal of Medical Sciences, they are labelled as being published in Jan-Feb 2001.
5. Bentham Open
According to Jeffrey Beall, Bentham Open started many of its journals in 2007. We have looked through Bentham Open’s web site and randomly looking through the journals that it lists, we see many journals where Volume 1, Issue 1 is in 2007.
To verify this view, we carried out a Google search limiting the search to the Bentham Open domain and searched by year. For example:
site:https://benthamopen.com 2007When we searched for 2007, over 70 journals were returned. No journals were returned when we searched for 2006. We conclude, and agree with Beall, that Bentham Open started publishing in 2007, with about 70 journals. We have not listed them all here, for reasons of space.
6. BioInfo Publications
This publisher is a little strange. In Beall’s analysis of this publisher it was reported that they published 300 journals. If you follow the “Journals” link from their home page you see that they now only publish fifteen journals.
I believe that you can get a complete list of their portfolio by using the URL http://www.bioinfopublication.org/pages/journals.php. This shows about 150 journals, not 300 as Beall reported.
It is challenging to locate their first journal. The best search term we could derive was:
site:http://www.bioinfopublication.org/ ("Volume-1 Issue-1") AND "Year-2009"Using 2008 as the year did not return any results.
The journals, from the above search, returned the following journals (Table 3).
| Journal | First Published | Last Issue |
| International Journal of Drug Discovery | Jun 2009 | Aug 2017 |
| International Journal of Machine Intelligence | Jun 2009 | Jun 2016 |
| International Journal of Chemical Research | Jun 2009 | Aug 2017 |
We note that the three journals shown in Table 3 are no longer being published, with the date of their last issue being shown in the table.
Given that Beall reported that Bioinfo Publications published 300 journals, yet only about 150 are listed on their web site, it does raise a question as to whether we have managed to locate the earliest date that they published their first journal?
7. Dove Press
Looking at Dove Press’ web site, we were able to use the Google search shown below to locate their earliest published journal. Using 2005, returned four journals. Using 2004 returned zero journals.
site:https://www.dovepress.com/ "Volume 1, 2005"Table 4 shows the four journals that we believe were the first four published by Dove Press in 2005.
| Journal | First Published |
| Vascular Health and Risk Management | Apr 2005 |
| Therapeutics and Clinical Risk Management | Apr 2005 |
| Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment | Apr 2005 |
| Therapeutics and Clinical Risk Management | Apr 2005 |
8. Insight Knowledge
Using the Google search shown below, adjusting the year until no results were returned, we find that Insight Knowledge started publishing in 2011. In that year, they started publishing over 30 journals.
site:https://insightknowledge.org/jhome.php?jid=2044-8961 "Volume 1" 2011In Beall’s original analysis, it says that the publisher listed its (then) 15 journals as starting in 2010, but none of them had any content. This would resonate with them actually starting in 2011, which is what we found.
We have not shown the complete list but if you want to see them just use the Google search shown above
9. International Research Journals
To establish when this publisher started its journals, we used a Google search of the form:
site:https://www.interesjournals.org/ 2010Once we went back to 2009, we did not see any journal titles in the search results but those shown in Table 5 were returned for 2010. Therefore, we conclude that International Research Journals started publishing its journals in 2010.
| Journal | First Published |
| Educational Research | Feb 2010 |
| Journal of Medicine and Medical Sciences | Feb 2010 |
| International Research Journal of Plant Science | 2010 |
| African Journal of Food Science and Technology | Jul 2010 |
For the journals in Table 5. one does not have a month. This is because the month of publication is not shown on the web site.
In the case of International Research Journal of Plant Science, this journal published six issues in 2010. One of the papers in the second issue was published in 2010 so we assume that the first issue was published in June or July 2010. We also note that the date for the first issue is probably not given as the three papers in that issue were only abstracts and there is no full paper, formatted as other papers, which do include a month of publication.
10. Knowledgia Review
The URL given by Beall no longer exists, and searching for the publisher did not give any useful results.
Referring back to the original analysis by Jeffrey Beall, he states that the publishers first journal appears to be Asian Journal of Agricultural Research, which was published in 2007. Therefore, we assume that this publisher started publishing in that year.
11. Libertas Academia
This publisher was acquired by Sage in 2016. The publisher started publishing in 2014 and was listed on Beall’s list, but was later removed.
It it not obvious which journals were acquired by Sage but as they started publishing in 2004 and other publishers in this article predate this, we have not looked any further, at the present time, as the main aim of this article is to identify the first predatory journal.
12. Medwell Publications
We used the following Google search to try and identify when Medwell Publications published its first journal, adjusting the year as required. Table 6 shows the journals that we found.
site:https://medwelljournals.com/journalhome.php Volume 1 AND 2002| Journal | First Published |
| Asian Journal of Information Technology | Jan 2004 |
| Journal of Food Technology | Mar 2003 |
| Pakistan Journal of Social Sciences | Mar 2003 |
| Journal of Animal and Veterinary Advances | 2002/2003 |
The Asian Journal of Information Technology published twelve issues in 2004, so we assume that an issue was published each month. Strangely, the first volume on the web site is Volume 3. We could find no reference to Volume 1 or 2. It could be that this journal started publishing in 2002 (which is why we include it in Table 6), but we have listed 2004, as this is the information we have from the web site.
The Journal of Food Technology and the Pakistan Journal of Social Sciences started publishing in 2003. No month is provided but as the journal published four issues in 2003, we have attributed a month of March to the first issue. It could have been January, but we have decided to be conservative in our estimate.
The Journal of Animal and Veterinary Advances says that it published one issue in 2002. However, the web site does not show any papers. Volume 2 (published in 2003) had twelve issues so, we assume, the journal published its first issue in January. Whether we take 2002 or January 2003 as the start date of this journal, it appears to be the first journal published by Medwell Publications.
13. OMICS Publishing Group
The first journal we can find published by the OMICS Publishing Group, now more commonly known as OMICS International, is the Journal of Proteomics & Bioinformatics. You can find this on the OMICS web site journal listing, but when you click on the link it takes you to Longdom Publishing SL. [Looking at the stable of publishers/journals that make up the OMICS portfolio is on our list of things to look at.]
The Journal of Proteomics & Bioinformatics published its first article in April 2008.
14. Science Publications
Using the Google search below, we were able to identify only one journal that started publishing in 2004 by Science Publications. This journal is shown in Table 7.
site:https://thescipub.com 2004*Volume 1| Journal | First Published |
| American Journal of Applied Sciences | Mar 2004 |
In his original analysis, Beall said that some of the journals have issues as far back as 2005. Although we have found one slightly earlier than that, our assessment broadly agrees with that of Beall.
15. Scientific Journals International
We were unable to find a web site for this publisher. A Google search for the publisher returns quite a few discussions about this publisher, but no web site.
Looking back at the paper in which Jeffrey Beall analysed this publisher, said “It appears that the first titles were published starting in 2007“, so that is the year we will assume that this publisher starting publishing.
The history, and current status, of this publisher is worthy of further investigation but is beyond the scope of this article, but we have added it to our list of things we should investigate further.
16. Science Domain International
Looking at the Science Domain International web site, there is no link to the journals that it publishes.
We did Google “Science Domain International” and there is a lot of information and discussion about this publisher. It is beyond the scope of this article to summarize, or go into the details of that discussion. Suffice to say, this is a publisher that is worthy of further investigation and we have added it to our (growing) list of topics that we need to investigate.
Looking at the original analysis by Beall, he suggests that most of the journals started publishing in 2011. Perhaps a small number were published before this, but they are unlikely to be before some of the other early journals mentioned in this article.
17. Scientific Research Publishing
We could not find find a suitable Google Search to track down the earliest publisher paper from this publisher mainly, I think, as the pages make use significant use of Java Script. Given the large number of journals they publish, it was not practical to look through each one manually.
We decided to web scrape the web site, which not only enables us to automate the process and let the computer do the work, but we felt that it might be a useful tool to develop as we may be able to develop it further for other future projects.
Starting from the journals home page, we followed the link to the list of journals and found out when the each journal was first published. In doing this, we were returned 328 journals, but after removing duplicates (as some were listed in more than one category, we ended up with 248 journals.
Table 8 shows that the first journal published by Scientific Research Publishing was in Oct 2002.Their next journal was not launched until 2008, when the publisher started four new journals.
The introduction of new journals slowed down in 2014, when only one new journal was started. In 2018 and 2019 no new journals were started
| Journal | First Published |
| Journal of Minerals and Materials Characterization and Engineering | Oct 2002 |
Figure 1 shows the number of journals started by this publisher, with the peak being in 2011, when 112 new journals were started. This analysis agrees with the original analysis by Beall, who said “Most of the titles began publishing in 2010 and 2011“.
Conclusion
Taking all the evidence from above, the earliest journal we can find, that was classified by Jeffrey Beall as predatory is, one of those published by ANSInet. Table 2 shows the three candidates, these being the Journal of Applied Sciences, the Journal of Biological Sciences and the Journal of Medical Sciences.
Given that the Journal is Biological Sciences published in January of that year, we are denoting this as the first predatory journal.
To be clear, the first predatory journal that we can locate is the Journal of Biological Sciences published by ANSInet in January 2001.
Of course, you may know different and, if you do, we would be happy if you could let us know, so that we can check on that journal.
If you have read all of this article, you’ll have seen that it appears that some of the publishers have gone out of business. This not only means that we cannot reliably check when they first started publishing their journals but the fact that we cannot find the publisher, their journals or their papers means that these papers are lost from the scientific archive.
In one of our other articles, we asked whether predatory publishers respect the scientific archive? One of the ways we suggested that it can be shown that they do not, is by not archiving the papers that they accept in a way that they are available forever. For a number of the publishers mentioned in this article, this appears to be the case.
Image Acknowledgements
- Header image background: Dmitry Demidov, Pexels, https://www.pexels.com/photo/wooden-boards-creating-surface-of-background-3800064/
- Rosette on header image: ArtsyBee, https://pixabay.com/illustrations/award-ribbon-rosette-win-first-won-1174823/
- Journal on header image: CC BY-NC-ND 3.0, image (we have blurred this image and removed certain parts of it, to protect its identity as it is not a predatory hournal)