Now predatory publishing market is increasing day by day. Beall's list almost daily updates us about fake publications. Now most of the current studies warn us to cite fake, hijacked and predatory or low quality research works.
But in my context (in Pakistan) there is no restriction. Here we scholars have little information about predatory journals.
What do you think..how should I conduct literature review? What sort of studies should I cite and what should I avoid?
Your contribution is highly appreciated.
Regards,
Remember that it is the content of a paper that is important, not the name of the journal!
Judging contents is the responsability of readers in association with their abilities to master the relevant literature more or less. Note also that there is an exponential increase of what can be read. Should reading become a fulltime job?
Yes dear Sabah. Being a scholar in a region where it's difficult to find resources, I would cite any journals on statements or data that are logical, and I can easily believe to be true. I can understand that some researchers have to publish in alternative non-subscription journals. From a recent research, several respondents also agreed that it's alright. We can be responsible for what we report, and we have to trust others to be responsible. But there are other scholars who prefer not to cite those sources. This is fine, if we have good alternatives. But one of the big hurdles to Malaysian scholars is the difficulty in getting resources because we do not have access to libraries, and some do not have a research grant. If subscription journals are willing to provide papers free of charge, the number of citations and impact factor are likely to increase. Do you agree?
Dear Miranda, I agree with you about the limited resources in our developing countries. But dear citation of low quality publishing is perhaps a weak point of our research work. To achieve an international standard it sometimes seem to me that we should avoid fake publications. Recently I reviewed a paper for my national journal in which all the five studies in literature review section were published in low quality journals. I think such citations are unacceptable in international (ISI indexed journals).
Remember that it is the content of a paper that is important, not the name of the journal!
Judging contents is the responsability of readers in association with their abilities to master the relevant literature more or less. Note also that there is an exponential increase of what can be read. Should reading become a fulltime job?
Thanks dear Marcel. Your answer is logical.. you are ignoring the concept of good or fake journals...
I fully agree that it is the content of the paper that matters; not IF of the journals. The past history of science have happened when no body was classifying journals as predatory or otherwise; and many of the landmark developments had happened / were reported in unknown / regional journals.
The actual peer review happens in the minds of the reader. If what one says is logical and testable then how does it matter which journal it is published?.
Moreover, it could be seen that science publication is a big business, whether done by the so called high quality journals or predatory journals. I wish science publications are not commercialized.
Dear sir Aziz..I agree with you and my purpose is not to degrade the works of scientists published in predatory journals. You are giving here the reference of past but please note down that predatory publishing was not the matter of past. This business has just started from the middle of the first decade of twenty first century.. I think this is the time to think reasonably.. to avoid any sort of disadvantages in future.
Wishes,
Dear Dr Zaib
Predatory journals became an issue only when scientific publications became lucrative business. Otherwise the so called predatory journals would not have come up or flourished. Then furthermore how you define a predatory journal - is it a journal that predates on other journals, their potential earnings? Of course, many journals may be following unscrupulous practices and publishing papers on payment; incidentally many of the non-predatory journals (so called reputed ones) also take money for publication of articles.
Moreover, in the field of science the ultimate peer reviewer is the reader - the researcher. Some journal publishers, compilers or any such authorities can not usurp the rights and responsibilities of that peer reviewer.
Regards
Avoid poor quality paper. A good paper you may find in any Journal. It depends on researcher to researcher.
It always boils down to the content of the article published. It is not uncommon for good papers to be found in predatory journals. Also note that you can still find fabricated results in the so called reputable journals. In the end, it is at your discretion to sort out what is right or wrong for your review.
For me, too, the evaluation of a citation, for its incorporation or not in the literature of a manuscript, must be based on its content, with a prerequisite: not this citation to come from a fake or hijacked Journal, if this can be proved in some way.
Some essential rules must be followed.
See first of all i don't think any work is fake (until or unless some body has copied it). Each author does his work in his own way it may be not up to the level but still they do what they understood from the topic they have choosen. And when it comes to literature review yes i agree we should refer most of the journal papers which come under our topics and try correlate the points written in each paper and write them in a meaningful way how we thought of that topic. So, even in low publication also you can get some relevant info about the topic.
New researcher can't distinguish between standard and sub standard journal. He/she might have published good research paper in sub standard journal. For literature review, we must concentrate on good research paper.
My question is co-related with the dilemma of fake publishing and academic fraud.The only way to prevent this evil from academia is to stop citation of the works from these journals. We all researchers have responsibility to stop this money based not quality based business for the betterment of future research. But here most of the RG fellows intentionally or unintentionally are omitting the concept of predatory journals. Do they not think that their this act will promote fake publishing. If we will cite everything either without considering its origin... then what will be the future???
i am agree with Subhash C. Kundu and Aristidis Matsoukis that research content should be good.
Definitely, we should avoid citing articles from "fake/predatory" journals but we should also be extra careful on what to consider as "fake/predatory" journals.
I think there is indeed a correlation between poor quality research and where it is published, so I would pay particular to evaluating any article that appeared in a journal where I had doubts about the peer-review process.
That said, the peer review process is not fool proof, and even top journals publish work where the quality is questionable. So, I agree with what seems to be the majority of the opinion here: it is up to you to evaluate how well each article was done, and that the journal in which it appears can be relevant but not conclusive.
Thanks dear all for your contribution.. Now my task is to be careful in review and I have to give importance to the content of my literature review material.. predatory publications is of the subsidiary importance....
MY TOPIC IS SUBALTERN STUDIES and I have collected a no. of papers.. I really doubt on many papers and their correlation with their fake publishers...
Reviewing based on the available literature is always good. But the problem comes.. When one has to validate that published data. Now a days, many of the journals ask the authors to avoid the citations of predatory journals. The quality of the work can be known through the literature cited too like which journals have been refereed, Here, I attach the link to one of the papers from a journal where the editor took the stance asking the authors not to cite the predatory journal links in their publications.
http://threatenedtaxa.org/index.php/JoTT/article/view/2472/3502
What I have learnt from 3-4 systematic reviews of the literature that if we follow some guidelines for review, including quality criteria for the publications, we can evade the type of journals and publications you have mentioned. No matter how gullible is the publication, if we carefully look at the compulsory elements of a publication such as a clear research question, a clear methodology and how to results are put together, we can decide about a publication, worth citing or otherwise.
No doubt content is what matters but if you are so concerned about the quality, you can have a look at following two publications by Kitchenham, where they have talked about quality criteria for publication to be included in a systematic review or not:
Kitchenham, B., Brereton, O. P., Budgen, D., Turner, M., Bailey, J., & Linkman, S. (2009). Systematic literature reviews in software engineering–a systematic literature review. Information and software technology, 51(1), 7-15.
Kitchenham, B., Pretorius, R., Budgen, D., Brereton, O. P., Turner, M., Niazi, M., & Linkman, S. (2010). Systematic literature reviews in software engineering–a tertiary study. Information and Software Technology, 52(8), 792-805.
I understand the studies are far from your field of studies but basic guidelines are same. Now I personally go, or at least try to follow the same guidelines for reviewing publications for my research.
In my opinion for review paper are eligible only relevant papers
Well, I agree it is up to you to evaluate how well each article was done and whether a journal is fake/predatory/hijacked/low quality.
Here we scholars have little information about this category of journals. Efforts should be geared towards listing the ones that have been identified and classified as search.
We should ignore and avoid reading or quoting all fake, non-scientific and low quality commercial journal articles which are increasingly confusing the traditional domain of well researched, edited publications by serious scientific professionals in the world
I think you should check the journal that published the paper in this website
journalindex.org
Dear colleague,
As some of friends refered, there are significants scientific articles in low impact factor (IF) journals, on the other hand, there are some low quality articles in very famouse journals such as ... (I think, one of the main reasons for low quality article in high IF journals are suggested reviewers!!!!))) With a little imagination and concentration, you will kindly find that the quality of the content.
the you can kill two birds with one stone only with a focus on content. For me the results section and also materials and methods are important, because we can find many points about that article.
I hope you can find your questions answer among these responses.
The best,
Mehdi
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