There are common terms pointing to unapproved publishing journals, like fake, predatory, phishing ... etc. Can someone help clarifying the differences between these terms?
Thanks Ramadan, however it seems there are some differences between these words, especially, concerning exploitation. We need clarification.
I believe, like Ramadan, that the term 'predatory' is the common 'umbrella' term that overarches the other terms also mentioned. Fake - I do not think is a good term to use. All journals are 'real' and the means that they use to try and attract manuscripts are real - it is just that their means, motives and intentions differ. Predatory journals are generally 'soliciting' for custom purely on the basis of monetary gain - and not for the overall 'good/quality' of the academic community through robust review processes.
Dean Whitehead rightly elaborated the real difference between the two terms. Both the terms are used interchangeably in academia but I believe the term predatory is more apt and meaningful rather than the term fake. As every journal is real in itself, no matter what its aims and objectives are.
Ashraf M. T. Elewa
I think It is apt to use predatory as terminology rather than mentioning as fake journals.
you can verify the beall's list of predatory journals or publishers before starting publishing your articles.
Predatory Journals publish for a fee without providing peer-review or editing services.Fake journals are the journals do not follow peer review process or language editing .
All Springer Nature journals are "predatory." They charge authors and their institutions thousands of dollars to publish an article, then they bundle the article with other articles and sell them to libraries. Springer Nature controls thousands of journals and they earn billions of dollars US, every year. Clearly, Springer Nature is not interesting in advancing science, but only making money. But you won't find any Springer Nature journals on Beals list--and that's because Beal does not dare challenge the big multi-billion dollars publishers all of whom are "predatory."
Studies have shown that up to 70% of the "research" this is published is fake or can't be replicated. This is because of the ethos of "publish or perish;" that is, publish or lose your job or funding. This is why Springer Nature and other conglomerates own and have created thousands of journals-- they knowingly publish fake research and they create thousands of journals that publish fake research, because it makes them money.
What this means is that: every journal or publisher, such as Springer Nature, who charges money to publish or sell their "product" are publishing fake journals. If the journal charges a fee, it's fake because it charges a fee to publishe fake research that can't be replicated. It's all about money.
Dear Rhawn Gabriel Joseph ,
With all due respect your reply is full of well...let's say provocative statements. However, first of all, the majority of the Springer Nature journals are subscription-based journals that charge no fee to the authors. Furthermore, yes they earn a substantial amount of money, but the ‘champion’ is Elsevier with a profit margin of 36% that makes even pharmaceutical companies and companies like Google and Apple blush (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science). Are they publishing even more fake science? Really?
Your 70% irreproducibility statement refers to “Baker, M. (2016). Reproducibility crisis. Nature, 533(26), 353-66” which was at the time surely spectacular news but according to a way better performed study “Fanelli, D. (2018). Opinion: Is science really facing a reproducibility crisis, and do we need it to?. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(11), 2628-2631.” https://www.pnas.org/content/115/11/2628 it states when it comes to reproducibility that it is “not distorting the majority of the literature, in science as a whole as well as within any given discipline; (ii) heterogeneously distributed across subfields in any given area, which suggests that generalizations are unjustified; and (iii) not growing”.
Finally stating that every journal or publisher who charges money to publish are publishing fake papers/journals is a ridiculous statement. Everyone who states that journals like “Nature Communications” (Impact factor: 14.919), “Cell Reports” (Impact factor: 9.423), “ChemComm” (Impact factor: 6.222) are fake journals is well…spreading fake news. It is always good to come up with provocative statements, but your reply cannot be taken too seriously.
Best regards.
Read below article:
Predatory vs Legitimate Publishing And Its Consequences: A Review
http://www.qqml.net/index.php/qqml/article/view/705
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