Dear Readers,
Kindly go through the referred links of webpages and publications if you are not aware of them.
This is what I found in Wikipedia about Predatory Journals:
"In academic publishing, predatory open access publishing is an exploitative open-access publishing business model that involves charging publication fees to authors without providing the editorial and publishing services associated with legitimate journals (open access or not). "Beall's List", a regularly-updated report by Jeffrey Beall, sets forth criteria for categorizing predatory publications and lists publishers and independent journals that meet those criteria. Newer scholars from developing countries are said to be especially at risk of becoming the victim of these practices."
Further to add, the webpage https://scholarlyoa.com/ and a few recent articles published in eminent journals is highlighting that most of the predatory journals are rooted from and publishing majority research articles of authors affiliated to institutions based on South Asian countries like India besides many from other developing and developed nations. My question is...
South Asia particularly India is an emerging leader in scientific quality contribution. Then, Why South Asian countries primarily India is being represented as the major source and destination of so called Predatory Journals?
Is it because of the inefficiency of some group of publishers and/or individuals trying to expand academic business without following any ethics?
Or
Is it because the early carrier researcher in the country gets encouraged by confirmed and immediate acceptance of their article from journals having ISBN Nos. only (which is considered as quality standard here) with/without quality evaluation for their promotion/ PhD?
Or
Weak regulation regarding managing quality standards of scientific publications is responsible?
Hope to get your views regarding this.
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Pls. check references before you comment:
https://scholarlyoa.com/
https://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/
https://scholarlyoa.com/individual-journals/
https://scholarlyoa.com/other-pages/hijacked-journals/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_open_access_publishing
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v534/n7607/full/534326a.html (research article published in Nature, June 2016 by Jeffrey Beall)
http://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-015-0469-2 (research article published in BMC Medicine, October 2015 by Cenyu Shen and Bo-Christer Björk; Open Access)
http://crln.acrl.org/content/76/3/132.full (research article published in College & Research Libraries News, March 2015 by Monica Berger and Jill Cirasella)
http://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-015-0469-2
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v534/n7607/full/534326a.html
http://crln.acrl.org/content/76/3/132.full
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_open_access_publishing
https://scholarlyoa.com/
https://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/
https://scholarlyoa.com/individual-journals/
https://scholarlyoa.com/other-pages/hijacked-journals/
Article Butler D. Investigating journals: the dark side of publishin...
Article 'Predatory' open access: A longitudinal study of article vol...
Article Beyond Beall’s List: Better understanding predatory publishers
Article Predatory journals: Ban predators from the scientific record
Predatory publishers are more concerned about business than legitimate science. Any country where that criteria is met, not just India, will have some amount of predatory publishers. In countries where publishing is required for promotions, for obtaining a PhD, there will be a MARKET for predatory journals. I think the conditions of ready market, and need to publish are very much met in India. But before pointing a finger at others, I must say that I'm aware that other countries are also vulnerable to some degree. Being ethical researchers, we are very concerned about predatory publishing. I would prefer a journal that does a genuine review and no impact factor, rather than a journal with a fake impact factor.
https://www.researchgate.net/project/Navigating-the-challenges-of-predatory-publishing?_esc=profileProjectCards&_sg=-5VpJr8ngSlCY95NST7IiCoqEDWIZscdGhK9biVk1q2-GxZzU-TZ67oYLEhr-KYVKURXJMZKmMaGS9QqSMDHqQ.Yfmv13BBrhCeAv7ccgo7s8jP6pLeyhLtXFqq8dQkyMMg-GQ_mGTQVtyCRyyjUFbK.T7WYm7gCMpJCChAYxqs5ebSGxiDwmzKsvbfKRZaygcEQUNzG20BHrGJBXb42n417&_viewIds%5B0%5D=V5D2MM74nmBjXfVUoIXKPFh9&_viewIds%5B1%5D=Z1pfyxDTCmlF5w2LudQkmMoe
This issue is likely to have an impact in any country where there are weak academic regulations. It can be observed that predatory journals are prevalent in many countries including the developed nations. These journals exploit the desperation of researchers to publish for reasons like an award of a research degree or career progression. The issue becomes more glaringly visible in the Indian context due to the high number of potential authors due to more opportunities to pursue research degrees in India in the recent years. One way out is to create awareness among research scholars not to publish in predatory journals (for simplicity we can refer to them as publications which publish for a publication fees). The other way is to make the academic regulations a little more stringent and meaningful so as to encourage better quality research output in terms of publications. In this context, I believe that the research supervisors are in the best position to advise their scholars regarding the pitfalls of publishing in predatory journals.
Indian people have been engaged in formatting various international journals issued from different countries. The skill may be one of reasons of predatory journals.
Thanks a lot Miranda Yeoh, Satyanarayana Rentala, and Mushtaq Ahmed for your opinion.
I think, a strong regulation to maintain the quality standard of scientific publication is need of the hour in affected regions. I am more concerned about my motherland India than others. Though it seems the unethical business has their footing in developed nations too.
However, some country strongly discourage such under quality publication particularly for awarding research degrees or promotion. Then why can't the academic authority from India issue similar type of regulatory action? The University Grants Commission (UGC, the Regulator of higher education in Indian Universities) has recently issued a notice to identify the scientific journals of merit (quality) for the benefit of researcher in India. Lets see how it could make an impact.
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