Increasingly, journal articles publications regardless of article types continue to be very challenging especially for scholars without institutional support/subscriptions and those from developing countries. Additionally, on one hand, some major journals require relatively long periods to review, feedback, reject, or accept papers. On the other hand, some other journals are relatively timely in reviewing, feedback, reject, or accept papers. While it is believed that there are some predatory journals out there, a number of journals have been categorised as predatory journals due to one reason or another. Although there are ways of detecting predatory journals, some of these journals have been cited in many journals.
What are predatory journals and how can they be detected? How do you detect citations from previous journals?
6 Ways to Spot a Predatory Journal:
Always check the website thoroughly. ...
Check if the journal is a member of DOAJ, COPE, OASPA or STM. ...
Check the journal's contact information. ...
Research the editorial board. ...
Take a look at their peer review process and publication timelines. ...
Read through past issues of the journal.
Please see the following link
https://predatoryjournals.com/journals/
Dear Dr. Muhammad Aledeh , Thank you for this interesting question.
I usually try to ensure the following aspects.
1. The previously published articles indexed in Scopus (if it is a Scopus journal)
2. How many articles are published?
3. Is there any sudden increase in number of articles published?
4. How many articles from one country, from one institution and from one author?
5. Format of all the articles - same or different.
6. Referencing style - Do they follow any standard referencing style like APA, Harvard etc..?
7. Peer review process - importantly the number are days taken to get an article published.
8. Also, I try to check the authenticity of website.
All the best
Best regards
Yoganandan
Dear All,
Thank you very much for your invaluable contributions. Well done 👏
Best regards,
Muhammad Aledeh
Here is an incomplete list of similar questions and answers:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_to_recognise_predatory_journals
https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_can_I_check_for_predatory_journals
https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_to_know_about_predatory_journals
https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_to_spot_the_predatory_journal
https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_are_predatory_journals_How_to_find_them_Are_the_articles_published_in_them_considered
https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_to_identify_a_predatory_journal
I think Dr. Yoganandan G has given a detailed answer. I, however, would like to say that it has never taken me much time or effort to find out whether a particular journal is predatory or not based on the indications of the available info in the journal's page!
Wolfgang R. Dick . Many thanks to you. I'm amazed how you managed to trace all former threads on the topic. Much useful information!
There are no sets of well-validated criteria in determining what constitutes a “predatory” journal. Most well-cited journals with high IF might have had similar trajectory diring their evolution.
It is more safe to publish your papers through one of the main known data bases, such as, Scopus, Web of Science, ABDC (for business).
Apart from the typical informal journals and editorials that are relatively easy to detect as predatory, who is the judge? and how he gained authority and recognition?
There are cases where journals are declared predatory because of a lot of competition between journals. It is such a way of getting rid of a competitor.
Much as "anything" should not be called a Journal, "Predatory" has recently become a common ascription to any Journal that does not unnecessarily stress authors in terms of lengthy time and enduring rigors before publication. Just like books are occasionally revised for a more improved edition, Journals can develop to very enviable standard. Unfortunately, no clear features are used to describe predatory journals other than they: publish faster, have low profile editors, charge APC, etc. And many institutions don't consider papers published in them for promotion purposes.
The researcher usually has too much work and too little time to spend on assessing the status of the journal. The researcher does this in the simplest way. He or she consults a scientific digital library for the journal's online peer-review metrics. On the basis of this he/she makes a decision whether to publish or not.
And as for the citation rate of the author's work - there is no crime in it. As long as the references to the original source, i.e. your publication, are correct.
Interesting contributions recently posted.
In as much as we would like our work to be published in reputable and credible journals so much as we careful not to allow ourselves to be victims of predatory journals. All credible and reputable journals started somewhere, where they even might have had some of the features of what are mostly categorised as predatory in nature. However, some search have found some of these already mentioned methods of identifying predatory journals to include some journals as 'predatory journals' whereas several different major journals have cited these same journals. Therefore, arguments made by Aleksandra Galkina and God'Sgift Ogban Uwen seem to be very interesting to review what could be the case in the politics of journal publication. Spitze!
Dear Prof. Muhammad Aledeh thank you for sharing this excellent question.
I agree with Dr Aleksandra Galkina
With kind regards.
Hi
Well I think it's a great concern in today's era to know abt such predatory journals.. They ppl just earn the money without maintaining the legitimacy of our research... As thy don't follow the procedure n format which other jounals do follow... Here we have to surf ourselves where we can publish our research
I think there are two major comprehensive directories DOAJ and JCR master list which will help to identify the journal.. Whether it is predatory or not....
Rifat Bhat Thank you very much for your invaluable contribution. Much appreciated!
Dear Muhammad Aledeh One can use the criteria used by Jeffrey Beall for determining predatory publishers. They were used to create the original Beall’s list and are used now for the updated lists.
https://beallslist.net/how-to-recognize-predatory-journals/
Dear Dr. Arbind K. Choudhary , Thank you for the information (Beall's list).
Just for discussion I am sharing this information in this thread.
There are cloned journals; can we say these journals are also predatory journals...I too not know, but they are more dangerous to research, researchers, academic system.
Below is the website link - 2 websites but one journal ....Which one is cloned?
1. https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/turkbilmat ( there is information about another website address)
2. https://turcomat.org/index.php/turkbilmat
May issue contains 517 articles.
Which one is original?
It seems that there is a big issue (can I say scam?) going on in India....
Scholars are lured by middlemen. The articles are published in Cloned Journals. The scholars lose money and their published articles lose credibility.
Thanks and regards
Dear Yoganandan G I agree with your statement: It seems that there is a big issue (can I say scam?) going on in India.... I suspect each one is mirror image of the other as actual contact addresses, names of publishers and of editors (and their e-mails) are missing in both cases.
Yesterday I received an email from orcid.org from which it became clear that my article "Electronic Resources in Mechanical Engineering in Diagrams and Commentary", previously published in the IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) last summer, was republished by some (let's not name which). How, in this case, to treat this journal, to which I was ready to submit an article on this topic, but did not know the cost of publication, and the journal did not respond to my specific question in the face of funding shortages? Is it a predatory journal or not?
Dear Yoganandan G ,
Indeed, something is wrong when it comes to the journal “Turkish Journal of Computer and Mathematics Education” (TURCOMAT) 1309-4653. Interesting info can be found in the comments on SCImago: https://www.scimagojr.com/journalsearch.php?q=21100902608&tip=sid&clean=0
The second link you mentioned is (most likely) a hijacked version of (what used to be) a legit journal. Not sure whether the original one still exists. The DeriPark link is I think a victim of the hijackers as well, they are no publisher. According to https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/page/about I quote: “It provides electronic hosting and editorial process management services for academic refereed journals published in Turkey under the umbrella of TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM. DergiPark supports the existence of national academic journals in accordance with the standards and increasing their international visibility. DergiPark does not interfere with the operation, management and content of the journals, and does not become a party in cases of conflicts of interest and ethical violations. It only provides infrastructure and provides "technical support" for the use of the system. Authors should contact the editor of the relevant journal for any issue regarding their publication.”
I think that indeed the journal is hijacked (they have Indian names as editors and authors while this used to be a Turkish journal) and will be discontinued from Scopus soon. According to the above link in SCImago a current investigation by Elsevier is going on and will be finished within the coming months.
Best regards.
PS. According to https://www.scopus.com/sourceid/21100902608 when you look at the ‘Scopus content coverage’, they use to publish an average of 28 papers a year. As you mentioned now their number seems to have increased suspiciously high. Update: It is already identified as hijacked journal in: Preprint Hijacked journals in Scopus
and is discontinued by Scopus (everything published after 2020 is no longer considered Scopus indexed).
Really knowing predatory magazines is difficult for a lot of researchers especially beginners thanks for bringing up this wonderful topic
Dear Aleksandra Galkina ,
If the journal you talk about is anyway legit then according to their ‘about the journal’ page (yes I figured out which journal it is) you can go the ‘retraction of article’ link (at least that is what it is called in the English version) and ask for retraction (if you want to for the one they published).
Well, is this typically predatory? Hard to say. Sometimes it is and sometimes it is just a sign how desperate they are searching for content. Then even though you didn’t pay anything they publish it anyway.
Best regards.
Rob Keller وسن شخير فرهود الغانمي Yoganandan G Arbind K. Choudhary Aleksandra Galkina Rifat Bhat Neil Dagnall Lamia Mustafa Al-Naama Dlshad Ali Omer Muhammad Arshad Muhammad Ihsan Your contributions are so much appreciated. Thank you very much for making this discussion more informative.
Lamia Mustafa Al-Naama it is timely and interesting question, which brought up seasoned researchers to table. Thank you
Rob Keller! The article is mine, and the more often it is published, the wider its audience. The definition of "Predatory" may come up in relation to the magazine, though. And that would be a shame.
Dear Muhammad Aledeh , I join to the opinion of colleagues which have shared useful links and suggestions above and would like to add that several publishers such as ACS (American Chemical Society), RSC (The Royal Society of Chemistry), Elsevier, Wiley, Springer, Taylor & Francis are reliable publishers. Also we should check the histoty of the journals, indexing and impact factors.
It is also obvious that some journals have been erroneously classified as predatory journals whereas they are doing greatly well. Interestingly funny is seeing these journals' work cited in other 'super journals' and they are indexed where other journals are indexed. I think that another way of checking is looking at their archives to see when they last published, just as Khurshed Bozorov mentioned as checking the history of the journals.
Journals lacking publication integrity, promising you the moon, unrealistic turn around times, no peer reviewing, no proof reading, and ultimately no value for your hard-earned money. The pitiable part is such entities lure many innocent junior authors into their loop wasting their reasonably good papers which otherwise would have got published in good scholarly journals. As far as citation is concerned, I am not sure whether we disregard citations in such journals or not.
Predatory journals are publications that exploit the open-access publishing model to charge authors fees without providing the editorial and publishing services associated with legitimate journals. There are several ways to detect predatory journals. One way is to use checklists that help to detect potential predatory journals and examine and compare their content and measurement properties. Another way is to use an open automation system for predatory journal detection. To detect citations from previous journals, you can use research databases like Google Scholar or scite.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Computer Science and Engineering
- Artificial Intelligence