I totally agree with you.

Dear Sajid Mohy Ul Din ,

As recently concluded in the following paper: Macháček, V., Srholec, M. Predatory publishing in Scopus: evidence on cross-country differences. Scientometrics (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03852-4 and I quote “Last, but not least, there is the underlying question why there are predatory journals in Scopus in the first place. Journals indexed in Scopus should fulfil minimum quality requirements (Scopus 2019). However, these criteria are either rather formal, derived from bibliometrics or rely on what the journal declares about itself. Predatory journals manage to look like regular scientific outlets on the outside, their bibliometric profile might not differ that much from other fringe journals and they do not shy away from lying about their editorial practices. So this filter is not likely to be effective in keeping out fake journals that are good pretenders. Scopus needs to find a way to fact-check whether the journal adheres to the declared editorial practices, including most prominently how the peer-review process is performed in practice. Unless the selection criteria are upgraded and/or the bar for inclusion is raised significantly, fake scientific journals will keep creeping in the database.”

Indeed, one way to achieve this is adapting ‘the Clarivate’ system. Create a ‘portal’ like ESCI for journals eligible for inclusion in the final indexing in SCIE (or SSCI) (with impact factor). So, a Scopus pre-indexing (call it provis-Scopus list or something) before a final indexing (with CiteFactor).

Best regards.

Dear Prof Kellar,

indeed that’s a very good suggestion to screen out fake/predatory/substandard journals. However, scopus every three months review substandard journals and update Discontinued journal list But they don’t share What journals are under reviewed so that researchers may avoid publishing with then. for example, recently management science letters, Ijicc, talent development and excellence etc were discontinued and they were Q-1 or Q-2 when they discontinued and many authors wasted their articles because when The news out their articles were already published......

Yes, it should be.

Dear Sajid Mohy Ul Din ,

The journal “Management Science Letters” https://www.scopus.com/sourceid/21100854867 is exactly my point. This journal (like most of the cases I’ve seen here on RG) was relatively new on Scopus and since their Scopus index they started to accept more and more papers (reading more and more money), in the Scopus coverage you can see that in 2018, 2019 and 2020 it doubled every year. This is often a reason to get discontinued in Scopus.

A notorious example are the three journals of the publisher Blue Eyes: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Are-these-journals-indexed-by-Scopus-IJEAT-IJRTE-and-IJITEE all three journals accepted huge amounts of papers as soon as they received their first Scopus indexing in 2018, two years later all three journals are discontinued. This can be prevented by a ‘provisional’ list as I suggested in my previous reply.

The journal “International Journal of Innovation, Creativity and Change” https://www.scopus.com/sourceid/21100819610 is an unfortunate example since during their first six years of their Scopus indexing, they accepted on average 25 papers a year and the last two years this increased up to a staggering 1583 and 1376. Unfortunately, no system can avoid this criminal behaviour (though Scopus could have discontinued this journal a year sooner).

The journal “Talent Development and Excellence” used to be a legit journal but mostly likely stopped already quite some years ago and is subsequently hijacked, see: https://www.researchgate.net/post/International_Research_Association_for_Talent_Development_and_Excellence_IRATDE_alnashr_Talent_Development_and_Excellence_byan_atmadyt_mjlt

Though Scopus should have a better evaluation system to spot this sooner this example is harder to prevent.

I (now) understand your point, but in the above examples I guess nobody knows how long the under-review procedure took. My guess is that every new round (the frequency of new releases of discontinued titles, roughly every three months) they look at journals where they observe ‘strange’ things (and/or received complaints about) and within three months they decide and as a result they come up with yet another new list of discontinued titles.

But I agree more transparency about this procedure and how long they really take to review a journal is necessary. If this is let’s say (more than) a year, then indeed a list of ‘suspicious’ journals or as you suggests a list of ‘under review’ allows researchers to avoid these journals or at least put them in the position to make their own estimate.

Best regards.

PS. Though I feel honoured I’m no professor, ‘just’ a doctor 😉

Dear Prof Keller,

you have extensive knowledge on this said matter, what if we can write something on it and publish? because a lot of researchers wasted their money, effort, and time by publishing in such journals I had experience of IJICC, IJSTR, Management science letters, talent development, journal of social sciences, and few more.......

PS. I titled you as "prof" because you are very knowledgeable

Dear Sajid Mohy Ul Din ,

Thanks for your kind words. I understand your suggestion since predatory journals are making too many victims and awareness is THE key to solve this, see for example: Panjikaran, L., & Mathew, A. (2020). Awareness of predatory publishing. ESMO open, 5(2), e000677. https://doi.org/10.1136/esmoopen-2020-000677

However, looking at the overwhelming number of papers dealing with the various aspects of predatory publishing, see for example:

Article How to Avoid Becoming Easy Prey for "Predatory" Journals and...

Article Identifying Predatory or Pseudo-Journals

Article Potential predatory and legitimate biomedical journals: Can ...

Article Checklists to detect potential predatory biomedical journals...

Grudniewicz, A., Moher, D., Cobey, K. D., Bryson, G. L., Cukier, S., Allen, K., ... & Lalu, M. M. (2019). Predatory journals: no definition, no defence.

Richtig, G., Berger, M., Lange‐Asschenfeldt, B., Aberer, W., & Richtig, E. (2018). Problems and challenges of predatory journals. Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology, 32(9), 1441-1449.

Duc, N. M., Hiep, D. V., Thong, P. M., Zunic, L., Zildzic, M., Donev, D., ... & Masic, I. (2020). Predatory open access journals are indexed in reputable databases: a revisiting issue or an unsolved problem. Medical Archives, 74(4), 318.

Article How is open access accused of being predatory? The impact of...

I sincerely think that another paper will not make the difference. All I try is to contribute my bit here on RG wherever I can. I think that your question contributes to this as well. Sharing your experiences will attribute too in order to help other RG members to prevent them from becoming a victim.

Best regards.