Is there any standardized definition of what a predatory journal is?
Here are three websites that say they have continued the work of Beall's List in tracking predatory publications, which was discontinued due to harassment.
- https://clinicallibrarian.wordpress.com/2017/01/23/bealls-list-of-predatory-publishers/
- https://beallslist.weebly.com/
- https://predatoryjournals.com/
If you have a publisher or a journal that you need to check, I suggest checking all three of these lists.
Derek Pyne
"pay-to-publish" is good point, although open access policies have extended this practice all over the place and it is hard to set a border between good and bad practices. I feel embarrassing that serious publishers are pushing authors to send their manuscripts to their sister open-access journals with the promise of "fast publishing" when the Editor does not consider a manuscript reliable for the parent journal. Not all studies deserve publication (for many reasons), but it seems that journals will hardly lose the opportunity to make money. The result is a incredible redundancy of literature that is suffocating and shading outstanding papers. For me, these practices are not so far from being "predatory".
Agree with all here and here is the list used by my uni and peers https://beallslist.weebly.com/
Hi Eric, Derek, Carlo, and Wasin
Thank you for your feedback and comments. However, as you know, Beall list of predatory journals and publishers is not an official and an approved list. It was criticized by some scholars.
I am asking about a standardized definition, provided by a group or organization, etc. of predatory journals, publishers, and even conferences which are spreading nowadays.
Thank you again.
Meghit
if the journal works on principle of 3P model (Pay-Publish-Profit), in a layman language if they are asking for the money to publish.
Meghit Boumediene Khaled to the best of my knowledge, there is no official definition. Probably, the funding agencies (which grease the wheels of the research machine) should set a standard for that. But, that would be a country-to-country diverse approach. Again, there is a "grey area" between good and bad practices that makes any "standard" definition hard to achieve.
This is what I was looking for Carlo. There is not an official definition and statement. We are receiving everyday invitations and call for papers that have no value. ResearchGate should play a key role solving this issue because plenty of fake articles are cited in its database and contribute in RG Score. There should be an official list of journals. I do not know if they are working or thinking on.
In the university, where I am working at, unfortunately, researchers applying for promotion are evaluated on the number of papers they have been publishing during their careers.
Yep, and actually I am surprised that as soon as I published my first paper as corresponding author (in an Elsevier journal), the number of invitations to fake journals/conferences has increased exponentially. More than a list of journals, a list of trustworthy publishers. But again, someone should set rules for a publisher to be ethically reliable...etc. And I consider funding agencies could have the greatest ability to rule that.
You are very correct Carlo. I strongly follow your line of thoughts on this matter. I have also received such an exponential invitation by some of these journals. The country-to-country diverse approach you suggested can really be of good help.
What I usually do: I first check if an open access journal that claims to be in the DOAJ.org index is actually there. https://blog.doaj.org/2014/08/28/some-journals-say-they-are-in-doaj-when-they-are-not/
With additional online research I can reach a decision.
Although there is no specific definition, I found this as an informative article on Predatory journals/publishers: https://ejournals.bc.edu/ojs/index.php/ihe/article/viewFile/9358/8368
Thank you Apar.
You agree that there is no standardized definition.
Dear Dr Khaled,
I could not find a standard definition from an organization.
Here are three websites that say they have continued the work of Beall's List in tracking predatory publications, which was discontinued due to harassment.
- https://clinicallibrarian.wordpress.com/2017/01/23/bealls-list-of-predatory-publishers/
- https://beallslist.weebly.com/
- https://predatoryjournals.com/
If you have a publisher or a journal that you need to check, I suggest checking all three of these lists.
The process model of a predatory journal is 3P (Pay-Publish & Profit). Who accept money for publication.
I think a good way of characterizing these predatory journals is that its primary aim is not to sell its own publications to the research community, but to earn money from selling its space to those who want to see their works published. Reputable publishers would want to sell their publications to those who want to read them. And who would want to read these journals if they are of poor quality? So the publisher has an interest in maintaining a high quality level. So-called predatory journals, on the contrary, do not care very much about selling their publications to the readers. This is why you can get access to these journals for free. But they charge high fees to the *writers* or the researchers themselves. If you want to get published, you have to pay them. In the case of real publishers you don't have to pay.
There may be exceptions though. Some good publishers may charge the writers, but I am not very familiar with this. Even if they do charge the writers, however, they have to get the majority of their income from selling the publications to the subscribers or readers. This is important.
For those interested in searching and mining them, there is a Predatory Journals miner at
http://www.minerazzi.com/predatory-journals/
Its news channels lets you find news relevant to them.
And here are some recent news obtained through said news channel. https://irthoughts.wordpress.com/2019/05/20/recent-news-on-predatory-journals/
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