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This study sets out to detail the deceptive practice of including stock characters in the editorial boards of journals run by predatory publishers. Stock characters are defined by the author as those that currently (2023) appear 20 or more times on these editorial boards. Predatory publishers are in turn defined by the author as open access publishers in violation of three or more out of eight egregiously 'fatal' criteria such as identity theft and token (or no) peer review. Stock characters (and stolen academic names and affiliations in general) are included in editorial boards to give them an unwarranted appearance of quality and excellence. Ninety‐six of these stock characters were identified, with their numbers of board memberships ranging from 20 to 503 in the current year (2023). Some were cases of total identity theft, some partial identity theft, and some willing compliance. Academics in the latter category could also have records of publications with the predatory publishers in question. Universities typically warn staff and postgraduate students about the dangers of engaging with predatory publishers, but they can be unresponsive or otherwise negative when alerted to instances of such engagements involving their staff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Key points: The expansion of open access entails a responsibility for supporting this public access with a guide to why, in an 'Age of Misinformation', research may be trustworthy.Such a guide can also provide a check on predatory journals, a fear of which may be unduly limiting researchers tapping into the expanding global scale of research activity.Journal publishing platforms offer opportunities for automating the gathering and presenting of relevant data for assessing journal adherence to scholarly standards.Industry organizations, such as ORCID, Crossref, and DOAJ, offer trust and verification networks that can be employed to further strengthen scholarly publishing integrity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Key points: Emerging as a novel cybercrime, cloned (or hijacked) journals with identical ISSNs to legitimate ones have surfaced.These cloned journals employ various tactics, and this article identifies and discusses the top five.Fraudulent journals primarily focus on print‐only publications, using parallel websites to mislead researchers.Cloned journals are using videos on their homepages to deceitfully showcase indexing in databases like Scopus or Web of Science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Key points: Our policy and implementation successfully identified references from predatory publishers, which authors without hesitation agreed to remove before publication.Higher predatory reference patterns emerged among authors in low‐income countries, those with non‐English primary languages, and sole authorship.After a year of implementing our policy, the editors changed our policy and workflow to better handle references from predatory publishers cited in literature reviews and meta‐analyses.Editorial responsibility is discussed, particularly concerning support for authors from lower‐ and middle‐income countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Key points: Academia is already witnessing the abuse of authorship in papers with text generated by large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT.LLM‐generated text is testing the limits of publishing ethics as we traditionally know it.We alert the community to imminent risks of LLM technologies, like ChatGPT, for amplifying the predatory publishing 'industry'.The abuse of ChatGPT for the paper mill industry cannot be over‐emphasized.Detection of LLM‐generated text is the responsibility of editors and journals/publishers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study attempts to detect papers originating from the Russia‐based paper mill 'International Publisher' LLC. A total of 1,063 offers to purchase co‐authorship on a fraudulent papers published from 2019 to mid‐2022 on the 123mi.ru website were analysed. This study identifies at least 451 papers that are potentially linked to the paper mill, including one preprint, a duplication paper and 16 republications of papers erroneously published in hijacked journals. Evidence of suspicious provenance from the paper mill is provided: matches in title, number of co‐authorship slots, year of publication, country of the journal, country of a co‐authors and similarities of abstracts. These problematic papers are co‐authored by scholars from at least 39 countries and are submitted to both predatory and reputable journals. This study also demonstrates collaboration anomalies in questionable papers and examines indicators of the Russia‐based paper mill. The value of co‐authorship slots offered by 'International Publisher' LLC from 2019 to 2021 is estimated at $6.5 million. Since this study only analysed a single paper mill, it is likely that the number of papers with forged authorship is much higher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, by using Beall's (Scholarly open‐access, 2014; Beall's list of predatory journals and publishers, 2018) predatory journal lists as well as direct e‐mail solicitations from journals, we intentionally submitted a poorly written manuscript to 58 open‐access journals using counterfeit names and affiliations. Although there have been several studies examining the practices of questionable journals, there is a lack of research investigating the interactive processes in detail. Our analysis, then, was to provide a more comprehensive view of the underlying reasoning for the acceptance or rejection of a manuscript. Of the 31 journals acknowledging receipt of our manuscript, 21 accepted it either unexpurgated or asked only for cosmetic revisions. Regarding 'positive responses', we point to five common flaws associated with such journals, namely that (1) they lack any interest in the researchers who are submitting manuscripts; (2) they do not judge academic writing in accordance with expected conventions; (3) they appear to be indifferent to scholarship including research design, plagiarism issues, and citation quality; (4) their review process is opaque and overly hasty, and (5) the tone they use in correspondence e‐mail messages is highly inappropriate. Based upon the investigation, it is clear that such journals' primary aim is in securing the article processing fee. Our findings paint a more comprehensive picture of questionable journal practices with the hope of disseminating such information to the broader scholarly community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the role of research funding and research collaboration in the potential for publication in predatory journals among Indonesian social science academia. A total of 2953 articles published by at least one Indonesian author in the social science field between 2010 and 2020 in Scopus‐indexed journals were collected. The SCImago quartiles of 2019 for the Scopus database and Beall's list of potential predatory journals 2021 were used to evaluate the quality and credibility of the publication outlets. Descriptive statistics and decision tree analysis were performed to classify and predict the quality and credibility of the publications. A contrast in the quality and credibility of publications was identified between research funded by Indonesian and foreign institutions. Research publications that were financially supported by Indonesian ministries and authored by a single author and/or via local and national collaboration were more likely to appear in lower‐ranked journals and predatory journals than publications funded by international sponsors and/or that involved foreign author(s)/international collaboration. This study therefore highlights the need for significant changes in monitoring and evaluation systems, timelines, and output targets of Indonesian government research grant schemes, alongside the enhanced involvement of foreign researchers and reviewers in the research funding schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To enhance open access (OA) journal publishing environments, this study proposed and applied a diagnostic framework for OA journal publishing. The framework includes three dimensions: OA policy establishment and disclosure, OA sustainability and journal openness quality. By applying this framework to nine OA journals in the field of science and technology in Korea, challenges faced by OA publishing were uncovered. For the dimension of OA policy establishment and disclosure, it was found that participants had lower perceptions of the importance of OA‐related financial disclosure and archiving policies compared with copyright policies. The dimension of OA sustainability was recognized as critical among participants. Finance was recognized as the most critical component of OA sustainability. Financial sources were mostly internal funding and article processing charges (APC), and participants perceived the current financial status of their journal positively. However, they were concerned about long‐term financial security. For the journal openness quality dimension, the participants were hesitant in disclosing reviews and reviewers, which can facilitate the prevention of fake peer review of predatory journals. Based on the findings, the article discusses how the challenging issues identified could be addressed. The results of this study may provide a guide for OA policy and OA system development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Key points: A journal is inanimate and incapable of predation, hence there is no such thing as a predatory journal.The predators are the publishing company CEOs, journal owners and other complicit people.Those committing fraud and identity theft should be prosecuted.Less time and effort should be spent on scholarly investigations.More time and effort should now be devoted to prosecutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined editorial differences between potential predatory and mainstream journals in the discipline of language and linguistics. A keyword search of the relevant journals on Beall's updated list of potential predatory journals led to a sample of 66 journals. An equal number of journals were selected from those indexed by Web of Science (WoS) via stratified random sampling. Analyses showed that the two groups of journals did not differ in terms of certain publication frequencies, mean number of annual articles, mention of peer review time, availability of the author guides and aims/scope sections, absence of editorial boards, mean number of editorial board numbers, article processing charge (APC) for open access, claimed indexation by ERIC and DOAJ and availability of ISSNs. However, these two groups of journals differed markedly in terms of contact information, years of editorial activity, certain publication frequencies, specialized focus, mention of acceptance rate, mean peer review time, claimed adoption of peer review, submission mode, listing of editors‐in‐chief, relevance of their expertise, mean number of editors, relevance of the editorial board members' expertise, mean APC, claimed indexation by Google Scholar/Scopus/WoS, reporting of fake impact factors, provision of Index Copernicus Value, claimed COPE membership, availability of ethical guidelines and various policies and existence of DOIs. These differences can be used as warning signs that a journal may not be legitimate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars engage with so‐called predatory or questionable journals for many different reasons. Among the contributing factors are monetary payoffs and the possibility of fast track faculty positions or promotion. It has been claimed that fast tracking promotion by using predatory publication outlets is an increasing problem. This study analyses the authors publishing in predatory journals with a focus on authors repeatedly publishing in predatory journals. In this study, a set of so‐called predatory journals indexed in Scopus was used. The data included 243,396 authorships of articles and reviews published from 2004 to 2021 by 169,742 unique authors. This study finds that 55% of the authors publish in one of these journals only once, 34.5% publish 2–5 times in these journals, 6.3% publish in them 6–10 times, and 4.2% publish more than 10 times. Furthermore, this study finds that the mean and median number of articles and reviews is correlated with the number of articles and reviews in predatory journals. Finally, authors publishing in predatory journals do not confine themselves to these journals and also publish in validated journals as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the phenomenon of presumed predatory scientific publications in the field of Educational Sciences, and the utilization of email by editors to request manuscripts. It examined, using content analysis methods, 210 emails received by three professors of the field of Education, at a Spanish university with different research profiles over a period of 3 months. Through analysis of the unsolicited emails a total of 139 journals and 37 publishers were identified and examined using: (a) the two main predatory journal inventories (Beall's list and Cabells' Predatory Reports), and (b) six of the major scientific bibliographic databases. The publishers and their websites were also analyzed, as well as the basic aspects of the emails' content. The majority of the unsolicited emails were from predatory journals or publishers and half of the article requests did not match the field of the recipient. In addition, it is relevant to note that more than half of the domains of predatory publishers analysed have untrustworthy security levels. The data provided relevant information on the phenomenon of predation in scientific publications in the field of Education and, most importantly, provided evidence for developing training and preventive strategies to tackle it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A global survey of researchers was conducted to gather perceptions on the prevalence and impact of predatory academic journals and conferences. The survey was open and inclusive in nature, with 1872 researchers, from a wide array of geographic regions, disciplines and academic career stages, voluntarily participating. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected and analysed. The survey revealed that over 80% (1537 of 1859) of respondents perceive predatory practices are already a serious problem or on the rise in their country of work, and risk infiltrating and undermining the research enterprise if left unchallenged. At least 24% (445 of 1872) of respondents admitted they had already published in a predatory journal, participated in a predatory conference, or did not know if they had. Over 87% of respondents who had published (174 of 199) or participated (60 of 64) indicated that a lack of awareness of predatory practices was the main reason. Those in lower‐middle and upper‐middle‐income countries were more likely to indicate they had engaged in these activities than those in high‐income ones, with some disciplines appearing to engage more than others. Individual impact was mixed: some indicated no impact while others noted a range of negative and detrimental feelings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The list of potential, possible or probable predatory scholarly open access (OA) publishers compiled by Jeffrey Beall was examined to determine the effect of their inclusion upon authors, and a possible bias against OA journals. Manually collected data from the publication archives of a sample of 250 journals from Beall publishers reveals a strong tendency towards a decline in their article output during 2012–2020. A comparison of the subset of 506 Beall journals indexed in Scopus with a benchmark set of other OA journals in Scopus with similar characteristics shows that Beall journals reveal as a group a strong decline in citation impact over the years, and reached an impact level far below that of their benchmarks. The Beall list of publishers was found to be heterogeneous in terms of bibliometric indicators but to be clearly differentiated from OA journals not included in the list. The same bibliometric comparison against comparable non‐OA journals reveal similar, but less marked, differences in citation and publication growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The systematic review of the research reported in this paper was conducted within the context of efforts to understand and combat predatory publishing, a new but fast‐growing area of research. It synthesizes the trends observed in knowledge production in predatory publishing, with a particular focus on the volume and distribution over time within different journals. It also looks at the composition of the predatory publishing literature in terms of the type of study, methods, topics, field of study, and contexts where research was conducted. Data were extracted from ERIC, Web of Science, and Scopus and identified 228 articles for evaluation published in 171 journals. The results demonstrate that the literature on predatory publishing is new but fast growing, with 88.6% of studies published since 2016. Only 37.3% reported empirical research, and the majority of these were quantitative studies with weak statistical tests. Medical journals carried the most articles. We conclude that scholarship on predatory publishing is in the early stages of development, and it is thinly distributed across journals, fields, and research contexts. It was surprising to find no studies in leading higher education journals, and this study reveals a research area that is still developing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This analysis of 229 editorials and opinion pieces published in science and medical journals explores the affective discourses used to characterise so‐called predatory publishing. Most (84%, n = 193) deploy one or more of three related categories of metaphorical and figurative language (fear, fakery and exploitation) to strengthen their rhetorical case. This paper examines the deployment, co‐occurrence and amplification of this language across the science publishing system, focusing particularly on the role of major science journals in adopting and normalising this emotive discourse. The analysis shows how few editorials offer alternative perspectives on these developments (n = 9), and their relative invisibility in scholarly debates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 2009 and 2012, Jeffrey Beall published four articles which analysed 18 publishers (17 of which he identified as predatory). He also introduced the term predatory in the context of scientific publishing. In 2012, he started Beall's List, which maintained a list of predatory publishers and journals. This became a valuable resource for those who wanted to know if a journal was legitimate, although others were very critical of the list. This article considers what he wrote and the list he developed and the criticisms that have been levelled against Beall's list. Beall's legacy can be considered to ensure that the problems of fraudulent or inappropriate publishing practices are highlighted and that the scientific community remains aware of the problem. Unfortunately, his legacy has not led to an eradication of predatory journals, and the problem appears to have become worse in the past decade. Although there is opportunity to build on his legacy, there have been few practical moves, and this article suggests that there is an opportunity for clearer, more universally accepted guidelines and approval criteria for quality journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A total of 966 allegedly 'predatory' open access publishers were examined to determine the nature of their ethical or unethical practices and the extent to which Australian academics were included on the editorial boards of their journals. An estimated 4,000 Australian academics (ca. 7% of the academic population) are on these journal boards. Of the publishers, 240 proved to be overtly fraudulent, the ethical status of the others remaining unresolved. About 86% of the Australian academics identified appeared on the editorial boards of journals belonging to those 240 publishers. Despite two decades of advocacy from librarians, there remains widespread ignorance of the existence of such fraudulent publishers, and more severe action is required. Reform proposals include naming the publisher in all references and in academic profiles and curriculum vitae. Universities are encouraged to take responsibility for publishing journals that replace those currently causing the problem. Institutions are urged to augment their current warnings and advice with formal policies, which will probably require a blacklist of unacceptable publishers. New formal policies for dealing with predatory publishers are currently being developed in some Australian universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Not all the journals included in credible indices meet the ethical rules of COPE, DOAJ, OASPA, and WAME, and there may also be trustworthy journals excluded from these indices, which means they cannot be used as whitelists for trustworthy journals. Equally, the many methods suggested to determine trustworthiness are not reliable because they include questionable criteria. The question arises whether valid criteria for identifying an untrustworthy journal can be determined and whether other assessment procedures are necessary. Since 2017, the Masaryk University Campus Library has been developing a suitable evaluation method for journals. A list of 19 criteria based on those originally suggested by Beall, COPE, DOAJ, OASPA, and WAME were reduced to 10 objectively verifiable criteria following two workshops with librarians. An evaluation of 259 biomedical journals using both the list of 19 and then 10 criteria revealed that 74 journals may have been incorrectly assessed as untrustworthy using the longer list. The most common reason for failure to comply was in the provision of sufficient editorial information and declaration of article processing charges. However, our investigation revealed that no criteria can reliably identify predatory journals. Therefore, a complex evaluation is needed combining objectively verifiable criteria with analysis of a journal's content and knowledge of the journal's background. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

University academics face multiple pressures to publish. These pressures emanate from contexts with different, often competing, social norms, which result in academics publishing for reasons that may run counter to accepted scientific practice. This paper asks what decisions are being taken by academics when it comes to their choice of scholarly book publisher. An analysis of books selected from more than 2,500 self‐reported scholarly publications produced by academics at Makerere University in Uganda from 2011 to 2017 shows that 31 scholarly books were published. Of these books, more than half (54%) were published by publishers that do not follow accepted scholarly publishing practice. Findings also show that there was a sharp decline in books published with suspect publishers in the second half of the 7‐year period. The article discusses possible reasons for the selection of suspect publishers and considers four factors that may account for the observable decline: (1) a cyclical downturn, (2) improved research management and reporting, (3) explication of the norms of science, and (4) self‐correction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proliferation of predatory or bogus journals has been recognized as a threat to academic research, and this study was conducted to discover the experiences of authors published in these journals. Eighty authors who had published in journals identified as predatory were surveyed. We asked how the authors learnt about these journals, what they thought about the reputation of the journals, their experiences of peer review and the quality of feedback provided, and whether publication was driven by PhD or job requirements. Our results showed that a third of authors discovered the journals by web searches or responding to email invitations. Over half said the reputation and name of the journal were important in selecting a journal, although a third admitted that the journal they published in did not have a good reputation. The main reason for selecting the journals was the promise of fast publication (31.2% respondents). Only half of the respondents said that publication was driven by PhD or job requirements. Just over a third reported that peer review was good or excellent, and only 17.5% said that peer review was poor or non‐existent – over 70% thought they had received good feedback from the journals. Although the research was somewhat limited, it does indicate general satisfaction with the journals in which the authors published. Fast publication coupled with good feedback and encouragement to submit can make publishing in predatory journals so tempting that few authors can resist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predatory publishing has become a much‐discussed and highly visible phenomenon over the past few years. One widespread, but hardly tested, assumption is the idea that articles published in predatory journals deviate substantially from those published in traditional journals. In this paper, we address this assumption by utilizing corpus linguistic tools. We compare the 'academic‐like' nature of articles from two different journals in political science, one top‐ranking and one alleged predatory. Our findings indicate that there is significant linguistic variation between the two corpora along the dimensions that we test. The articles display notable differences in the types and usage of keywords in the two journals. We conclude that articles published in so‐called predatory journals do not conform to linguistic norms used in higher‐quality journals. These findings may demonstrate a lack of quality control in predatory journals but may also indicate a lack of awareness and use of such linguistic norms by their authors. We also suggest that there is a need for the education of authors in science writing as this may enable them to publish in higher‐ranked and quality‐assured outlets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the reasons why authors publish in ‘predatory’ OA journals. In total, 50 journals were randomly selected from Beall's list of ‘predatory’ journals. Different methods, including WHOIS tracking, were utilized to query basic information about the selected journals, including location and registrant. Then, 300 articles were randomly selected from within selected journals in various scientific fields. Authors of the selected articles were contacted and sent survey questions to complete. A grounded theory qualitative methods approach was used for data collection and analysis. The results demonstrated that most of these journals were located in the developing world, usually Asia or Africa, even when they claimed they were in the USA or UK. Furthermore, four themes emerged after authors’ survey responses were coded, categorized, and sub‐categorized. The themes were: social identity threat, unawareness, high pressure, and lack of research proficiency. Scholars in the developing world felt that reputable Western journals might be prejudiced against them and sometimes felt more comfortable publishing in journals from the developing world. Other scholars were unaware of the reputation of the journals in which they published and would not have selected them had they known. However, some scholars said they would still have published in the same journals if their institution recognised them. The pressure to ‘publish or perish’ was another factor influencing many scholars’ decisions to publish in these fast‐turnaround journals. In some cases, researchers did not have adequate guidance and felt they lacked the knowledge of research to submit to a more reputable journal. More needs to be done by institutions and reputable journals to make researchers aware of the problem of ‘predatory’ journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Key points The term ‘predatory journal’ hides a wide range of scholarly publishing misconduct. The term ‘predatory journal’ unhelpfully bundles misconduct with poor quality. The term ‘predatory journal’ blinds us to important possibilities, needs, and questions arising in the developing scholarly landscape. The current scholarly publishing environment cannot rely on such a simplified classification of journals into predatory or not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In addition, quality includes an element of relevance and timeliness that will make an article useful or not to its target audience - an article in one journal may not be suitable (or considered quality) in another. This reputation is not quantifiable and so only works within relatively closed communities and operates to both exclude articles felt unsuitable and to improve and include articles and authors considered useful. When making any decision, editors need to balance the article's value to their community, and this may lead to a type of censorship - rejecting articles that could have value elsewhere. [Extracted from the article]