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Predatory publishing poses significant challenges to academic integrity and progress. It requires the involvement of academic institutions, funding bodies, and policymakers to establish robust evaluation mechanisms and promote ethical publishing practices. This study examines the effectiveness of implementing promotion policies to discourage unethical academic publishing, focusing on Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Ghana. This study analyses 273 promotion applications submitted from January 2022 to November 2023, regardless of approval. The results show that researchers at KNUST submit relatively more publications to recommended outlets after the implementation of the new promotion guidelines. Moreover, with nine out of ten non-verified publications found to be from predatory journals, the verification process effectively discourages publication such outlets. Our study therefore confirms that the verification process can identify predatory publication outlets. Consequently, it is recommended that research institutions eliminate incentives for publishing in questionable outlets through publication criteria as part of promotion standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper aims to address the issue of predatory publishing, sensu lato. To achieve this, we offer our perspectives, starting initially with some background surrounding the birth of the concept, even though the phenomenon may have already existed long before the popularization of the term "predatory publishing". The issue of predation or "predatory" behavior in academic publishing is no longer limited to open access (OA). Many of the mainstream publishers that were exclusively subscription-based are now evolving towards a state of complete OA. Academics seeking reliable sources of journals to publish their work tend to rely on a journal's metrics such as citations and indexing, and on whether it is blacklisted or whitelisted. Jeffrey Beall raised awareness of the risks of "predatory" OA publishing, and his blacklists of "predatory" OA journals and publishers began to be used for official purposes to distinguish valid from perceived invalid publishing venues. We initially reflect on why we believe the blacklists created by Beall were flawed, primarily due to the weak set of criteria confusing non-predatory with true predatory journals leading to false positives and missing out on blacklisting true predatory journals due to false negatives. Historically, most critiques of "predatory publishing" have relied excessively on Beall's blacklists to base their assumptions and conclusions but there is a need to look beyond these. There are currently a number of blacklists and whitelists circulating in academia, but they all have imperfections, such as the resurrected Beall blacklists, Crawford's OA gray list based on Beall's lists, Cabell's new blacklist with about 11,000 journals, the DOAJ with about 11,700 OA journals, and UGC, with over 32,600 journals prior to its recent (May 2018) purge of 4305 journals. The reader is led into a discussion about blacklists' lack of reliability, using the scientific framework of conducting research to assess whether a journal could be predatory at the pre- and post-study levels. We close our discussion by offering arguments why we believe blacklists are academically invalid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent times, there has been a proliferation of questionable practices in research publishing, for example, via predatory journals, hijacked journals, plagiarism, tortured phrases and paper mills. This paper intends to analyse whether journals that had been removed from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) in 2018 due to suspected misconduct were cited within journals indexed in the Scopus database. Our analysis showed that Scopus contained over 15 thousand references to the removed journals identified. The majority of the publications citing these journals came from the area of Engineering. It is important to note that although we cannot assume that all the journals removed followed unethical practices, it is still essential that researchers are aware of the issues around citing journals that have been suspected of misconduct. We suggest that research libraries play a crucial role in training, advising and providing information to researchers about these ethical issues of publication malpractice and misconduct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predatory publishers, also known as counterfeit, deceptive, or fraudulent, are organisations that exploit the open-access scholarly model by charging hefty article processing charges (APCs), often without the scientific rigour and ethical processes offered by legitimate journals. Their rising prevalence is of concern to the scientific community, as the consequences of falling victim to them can negatively impact academic integrity and reputation, and render an author's work worthless and untrustworthy. Common characteristics include inappropriate marketing and misrepresentation of services by targeting individuals with solicitation emails, inadequate peer-review processes, lack of editorial services and transparency about APCs, and false claims about citation metrics and indexing that cannot be verified. Given the infiltration of predatory publishers, authors are advised to proceed with caution when receiving solicitation emails and if in doubt, to follow the Think, Check, Submit checklist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predatory journals (PJs) publish research with little to no rigorous peer review in exchange for money. It is unclear what proportion of researchers is vulnerable to PJs and which factors are associated with vulnerability. The aim of this study was to evaluate the vulnerability of African neurosurgery researchers to PJs and identify their correlates. A 3-part electronic survey in English and French versions was distributed via social media to African consultants and trainees from November 1 to December 1, 2021. Bivariable relationships were evaluated with χ2 test, Mann-Whitney U test, Spearman ρ correlation, odds ratios, and 95% confidence intervals. A P value < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. There were 101 respondents to the survey (response rate 56.1%). Respondents had mean age of 34.9 years, 82.2% were male (n = 83), 38.6% were consultant neurosurgeons (n = 39), and 33.7% were from Central Africa (n = 34). Of respondents, 66 had published ≥ 1 articles in the past, and 13 had published at least 1 article in a PJ. A PJ had contacted 34 respondents via e-mail, and 8 respondents had reviewed articles for a PJ. The Think. Check. Submit initiative and Beall's list were familiar to 19 and 13 respondents, respectively. Publication in PJs was correlated with the respondent's age (R = 0.23, P = 0.02) and total scholarly output (R = 0.38, P < 0.01). Young African neurosurgery researchers are vulnerable to PJs primarily because they are not familiar with the concept of PJs or how to identify them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cabell Publishing Co. (herein Cabells), a private Texas-based US company, filled a void left after the shutdown of Jeffrey Beall's blacklists or watchlists that categorized open access "predatory publishing". In addition to a journal whitelist or safelist product, Journalytics, Cabells markets a product (Predatory Reports) for post-secondary institutions that lists journals' infractions and poor practices, and thus acts as a warning system for academics to determine if they might be dealing with a scholarly entity, or not. Predatory Reports consists of three levels of criteria, or "infractions" (severe, moderate, and minor), that correspond to eight categories. In this paper, we critically examined the Predatory Reports' 74 criteria to determine which of them are clear and useful, and which might be ambiguous or not entirely meaningful. We identified seven criteria that could be accepted as they are, 28 criteria that required clarification and revision, and 39 criteria that we believe should be eliminated. Our expectation is that once this and additional publishing-related criteria have been fully and carefully assessed, validated and parsed, that a community-based set of criteria will eventually become established to better guide academics about safe or risky publishing venues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last few years, unwanted emails daily fill the mailboxes of many scientists. Usually, they ask the recipient to send a paying article to a journal, generally with a deadline of two weeks. Now the time is coming to openly discuss and mention such kinds of demand and to name the journals behind them. The aim of this paper is thus to present, using some selected examples collected during five days (14–19 October, 2021), the dangers of responding to such a request and to specify the names of the journals concerned. Three otorhinolaryngological journals are particularly discussed: Journal of Otology and Rhinology , American Journal of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery , and Global Journal of Otolaryngology. In selecting some pertinent papers, it is easy to demonstrate that these three journals can easily be considered as predatory journals. Certainly, many other predatory, otorhinolaryngological journals exist. Hopefully, this paper will finally open a serious and scientific discussion about these predatory otorhinolaryngological journals, to definitively establish an available and valid list. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Professionalism is a core competency that is difficult to assess. We examined the incidence of publication inaccuracies in Electronic Residency Application Service applications to our training program as potential indicators of unprofessional behavior.Study Design: We reviewed all 2019-2020 National Resident Matching Program applicants being considered for interview. Applicant demographic characteristics recorded included standardized examination scores, gender, medical school, and medical school ranking (2019 US News & World Report). Publication verification by a medical librarian was performed for peer-reviewed journal articles/abstracts, peer-reviewed book chapters, and peer-reviewed online publications. Inaccuracies were classified as "nonserious" (eg incorrect author order without author rank promotion) or "serious" (eg miscategorization, non-peer-reviewed journal, incorrect author order with author rank promotion, nonauthorship of cited existing publication, and unverifiable publication). Multivariate logistic regression analysis was performed for demographic characteristics to identify predictors of overall inaccuracy and serious inaccuracy.Results: Of 319 applicants, 48 (15%) had a total of 98 inaccuracies; after removing nonserious inaccuracies, 37 (12%) with serious inaccuracies remained. Seven publications were reported in predatory open access journals. In the regression model, none of the variables (US vs non-US medical school, gender, or medical school ranking) were significantly associated with overall inaccuracy or serious inaccuracy.Conclusions: One in 8 applicants (12%) interviewing at a general surgery residency program were found to have a serious inaccuracy in publication reporting on their Electronic Residency Application Service application. These inaccuracies might represent inattention to detail or professionalism transgressions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The sudden increase of questionable or predatory journals has raised concerns in the medical literature. The aims of this study were to identify potentially legitimate and questionable trauma journals and to assess the applicability of criteria previously proposed in the literature to distinguish them.Methods: A comprehensive search strategy was developed to identify journals using keywords and controlled vocabulary. Presumed legitimate journals were identified using nine databases (Directory of Open Access Journals, PubMed, Web of Science, etc.). Presumed questionable journals were identified using Google Search/Scholar, emails received and former Beall's lists. Scientific active English journals whose titles contained the words injury or trauma were eligible. Two reviewers independently selected journals and extracted information from their websites. Criteria to differentiate journals status were based on two lists proposed by Shamseer et al. (2017; salient characteristics) and Wicherts (2016; transparency of peer review's items) and treated as dichotomous variables. Applicability of criteria to distinguish journal status was assessed using Fisher's exact test.Results: Following duplicate removal, 54 potentially legitimate and 30 potentially questionable active English journals were included. Among 13 salient characteristics, seven were found to distinguish potentially legitimate from potentially questionable trauma journals: the presence of fuzzy images or spelling and grammar errors on the website, homepages targeting authors, request to submit manuscripts by email, the absence of a retraction policy, promise of rapid publication and copyright claims. However, only 3/14 of Wicherts' items were associated with journal status: journal's website highlights issues of publication ethics, the journal has clear guidelines concerning sharing and availability of research data, and journal allows authors to indicate names of (non-) desired reviewers.Conclusions: Eighty-four active English trauma journals were identified. Among 27 criteria, 10 were found to determine trauma journals status related to their scientific legitimacy. Though no single criteria is foolproof, these criteria may be helpful to authors, readers, and reviewers when assessing potential legitimacy of scientific trauma journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To discourage faculty members from publishing in questionable journals, tenure and promotion standards in which the librarians play an active role can been developed. These standards have been effective in terms of identifying publications in questionable outlets. However, we need to explore how these systems are perceived by the main actors in research, which are the researchers. This study explores the perception of the researchers at a university in Ghana who have been evaluated by a system implemented to discourage publishing in questionable publication outlets. We collected data using an online, largely qualitative questionnaire distributed to all faculty members that had applied for promotion since the implementation of the verification process. The results show that the majority of the faculty members are satisfied or very satisfied with the new tenure and promotion standards. There are differences across faculties, and this seems to be tied to concerns about the choice of publication outlets. Furthermore, the dissatisfied faculty members are concerned with the role of the library in the verification process whereas the satisfied trust the judgement of the librarians. We discuss implications of the results as well as future development of the standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Le modèle de publication en accès ouvert « auteur-payeur », apparu en 2002, attribue à l'auteur ou son institution les frais de traitements des articles dus à la revue après acceptation, pour un montant de quelques centaines à plusieurs milliers d'euros. De nouveaux éditeurs, aux objectifs purement commerciaux, ont surgi vers la fin des années 2000, qui proposent à des auteurs naïfs et/ou désireux d'étoffer rapidement leurs curriculum vitae par des publications dans des « revues prédatrices ». Elles sont caractérisées par des sollicitations agressives par courriels, un manque d'éthique, l'absence de précisions sur l'éditeur et le comité éditorial, la pauvreté de l'examen critique par les pairs, des auteurs venant préférentiellement de certains pays, des frais de traitement des articles non spécifiés et plus faibles, une absence d'indexation et la promesse d'une publication rapide. The "author-pay" model of open access publication, which appeared in 2002, allocates to the author or his institution the costs of processing articles due to the journal after acceptance, for an amount of a few hundred to several thousand euros. New publishers emerged towards the end of the 2000s, which used this model but with purely commercial objectives, offering naive authors and/or wishing to quickly expand their curriculum vitae by publications in "predatory journals". They are characterized by aggressive e-mail solicitations, lack of ethics, lack of details about the publisher and the editorial board, poor peer review, unspecified and low fees for processing articles, a lack of indexing and the promise of rapid publication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Les conséquences délétères des revues « prédatrices » sont nombreuses, que le chercheur leur ait soumis son travail naïvement ou en connaissance de cause : travaux peu/pas lus par la communauté internationale en l'absence d'indexation et disparition de toute trace numérique en l'absence d'archivage. La réputation des chercheurs mais aussi des universités et des organismes de recherche, comme le crédit de la science auprès des citoyens, peuvent être durablement dégradés. Ces revues, en libre accès sur le modèle auteur-payeur, représentent autant de ressources indisponibles pour les revues légitimes. Une mobilisation conjointe de tous les acteurs concernés est nécessaire : chercheurs, universités et facultés de médecine, sections du conseil national des universités, éditeurs de revues légitimes, organismes de recherche, sociétés savantes, comités d'éthiques, financeurs, médias et décideurs politiques. Publier dans une revue prédatrice est désormais une méconduite scientifique. The deleterious consequences of "predatory" journals are numerous, whether the researcher submitted his work to them naively or knowingly: work little or not read by the international community in the absence of indexing and disappearance of any digital trace in the absence of archiving. The reputation of researchers but also of universities and research organizations and the credit of science for citizens can be sustainably damaged. These open access journals, with the author who pays as model, represent as many resources unavailable for legitimate journals. A joint mobilization of all the actors involved is necessary: researchers, universities and faculties of medicine, sections of the national university council, publishers of legitimate journals, research organizations, learned societies, ethics committees, funders, media and political decision-makers. Publishing in a predatory journal is now a scientific misconduct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Case reports and interesting images are valuable contributions to the radiology literature as they provide unique insights into uncommon conditions and rare presentations. Additionally, they serve as a rapidly expanding live image atlas and, therefore, can help radiologists to improve their diagnostics skills. However, due to high rejection rates and an increasing number of predatory publishers, publishing radiology case reports remains a daunting task for junior researchers. To overcome these challenges and ensure timely dissemination of their research findings, authors should consider several factors when selecting a target journal for case report publications. In this primer, we have summarized key considerations in journal selection and highlighted reputable journals that welcome radiology case reports. • Case reports (CR) and interesting images (IM) offer hands-on experience with publication process for junior researchers. • CR and IM function as a dynamic image atlas, aiding radiologists in the diagnosis of rare or challenging diseases. • Authors should consider the credibility, visibility, and readership of the journal to avoid predatory publishers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of 'predatory publishing', and indeed unscholarly publishing practices, affects all academics and librarians around the globe. However, there are some flaws in arguments and analyses made in several papers published on this topic, in particular those that have relied heavily on the blacklists that were established by Jeffrey Beall. While Beall advanced the discussion on 'predatory publishing', relying entirely on his blacklists to assess a journal for publishing a paper is problematic. This is because several of the criteria underlying those blacklists were insufficiently specific, excessively broad, arbitrary with no scientific validation, or incorrect identifiers of predatory behavior. The validity of those criteria has been deconstructed in more detail in this paper. From a total of 55 criteria in Beall's last/latest 2015 set of criteria, we suggest maintaining nine, eliminating 24, and correcting the remaining 22. While recognizing that this exercise involves a measure of subjectivity, it needs to advance in order to arrive – in a future exercise – at a more sensitive set of criteria. Fortified criteria alone, or the use of blacklists and whitelists, cannot combat 'predatory publishing', and an overhaul of rewards-based academic publishing is needed, supported by a set of reliable criteria-based guidance system. • Unscholarly 'predatory' publishing affects all academics and librarians. • There are problems with the 55 criteria used to establish Beall's blacklists. • A fundamental paradigm shift is needed to reform 'predatory' publishing research. • From the 55 criteria, we suggest maintaining 9, eliminating 24, and correcting 22. • Rewards-based academic publishing, independent of blacklists, needs reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-publication peer review (PPPR) relies on signed or anonymous/pseudonymous comments, and is a fundamental process that complements the weakness of traditional peer review that were not discussed by Trotter (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.profnurs.2020.10.009). Yet, should anonymous or pseudonymous entities be cited or acknowledged if their identities cannot be confirmed? This discussion abridges some of the issues underlining the fundamentals of PPPR, supplementing the gaps not covered by Trotter, and why there are ethical complexities involved with citing anonymous or pseudonymous entities. Based on COPE and ICMJE ethical guidelines, the argument against citing or acknowledging anonymous or pseudonymous entities is strong, because doing so would likely infringe upon one or more of their stated ethical regulations. Currently, no clearly stated regulations exist pertaining to this issue, so this discussion provides a spring-board for policy makers and academics to initiate a debate, and ultimately establish a clear set of publishing ethics guidelines pertaining to the acknowledgement of anonymous or pseudonymous entities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predatory journals, which are a major concern of the academic community, generally do not properly fulfill the reviewing and editorial processes which are the most important pillars of scientific communication. In line with the principle of the accumulation of science, the papers that have not been faithfully reviewed in these journals cause a bad effect on the scholarly communication. In this study, the impact of 17 journals with addresses in Turkey in Cabells' Predatory Report (formerly Cabells' Journal Blacklist) to the literature were examined. For this purpose, the journal and article level descriptive statistics were examined for the aforementioned journals, and analyses were made for the citations from the papers published in the journals indexed in the Web of Science citation database. A total of 3427 papers were published in these journals, which started to be published between 2010 and 2015, and 389 citations were made to these papers from the journals listed in the WoS. Such highest citations come from Turkey (24.16%), then China (7.20%) addressed papers. In addition, although there are no papers in fields such as art, humanities and physics, it has been seen that there are citations to papers from these fields. This is important in terms of showing the widespread impact of science. A paper published without serious peer review in any predatory journal affects all fields of science in terms of its method, findings and discussions. Therefore, to reduce the misleading or false effect of predatory journals on the literature, a more skeptical behavior should be displayed about citing the papers published in these journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to investigate how predatory journals are characterized by authors who write about such journals. We emphasize the ways in which predatory journals have been conflated with—or distinguished from—open access journals. We created a list of relevant publications on predatory publishing using four databases: Web of Science, Scopus, Dimensions, and Microsoft Academic. We included 280 English-language publications in the review according to their contributions to the discussions on predatory publishing. Then, we coded and qualitatively analyzed these publications. The findings show the profound influence of Jeffrey Beall, who composed and maintained himself lists of predatory publishers and journals, on the whole discussion on predatory publishing. The major themes by which Beall has characterized predatory journals are widely present in non-Beall publications. Moreover, 122 papers we reviewed combined predatory publishing with open access using similar strategies as Beall. The overgeneralization of the flaws of some open access journals to the entire open access movement has led to unjustified prejudices among the academic community toward open access. This is the first large-scale study that systematically examines how predatory publishing is defined in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of blacklists, as those that are employed in academic publishing, is problematic with or without biases, but with biases it is even more troubling. This is a theoretical paper that provides insights into the problems of using blacklists for research or for assessing a scholar's output. Biases may appear before an investigation is undertaken as well as after. We also explore the case of a low likelihood of including a non-predatory journal in a blacklist and with a decent power of criteria to detect a true predatory journal. In such an "ideal" list, unfortunately the false discovery rate (FDR) increases as the number of qualities postulated pre-study increases. In addition, the FDR will be biased downwards if the assessor deliberately starts with the assumption that the choice is binary (predatory or not) by lumping qualities together. When bias is introduced also at the post-study level, this further increases the chances that many of the predatory discoveries are false. The issue of bias in predatory publishing has not yet been discussed, and the presence of this factor in the debate on this important issue in academic publishing is relevant to all academics today. • Blacklists may carry high false discovery rates (FDRs). • Without biases the FDR of such lists can be large. • Adding human biases will cause a higher FDR. • Deliberately reducing choice to predatory or not causes a downward bias in FDR. • Blacklists have true and false positives but suffer from human biases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predatory journals and publishers are a growing concern in the scholarly publishing arena. As one type of attempt to address this increasingly important issue, numerous individuals, associations, and companies have begun curating journal watchlists or journal safelists. This study uses a qualitative content analysis to explore the inclusion/exclusion criteria stated by scholarly publishing journal watchlists and safelists to better understand the content of these lists, as well as the larger controversies that continue to surround the phenomenon that has come to be known as predatory publishing. Four watchlists and ten safelists were analyzed through an examination of their published mission statements and inclusion/exclusion criteria. Notable differences that emerged include the remaining influence of librarian Jeffrey Beall in the watchlists, and the explicit disavowal of his methods for the safelists, along with a growing recognition that the "list" approach may not fully address systemic aspects of predatory publishing that go beyond the individual author's ethical decision-making agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Screening criteria are a vital part of society, medicine and publishing. In this paper, a new framework, based on epidemiological principles, is developed to assess the effectiveness of criteria that are used to detect predatory behavior, or to assess whether a journal or publisher is predatory, and create blacklists. Applying epidemiological measures such as specificity, sensitivity, prevalence rates, the likelihood ratio, posterior and prior probabilities and odds, as well as Bayesian analysis, we elaborate on the false discovery rate and work towards assessing the likelihood that an entity is in fact predatory when screening criteria are used. We applied the framework to three different prevalence cases: a low prevalence rate where all journals are screened for predatory behavior assuming Jeffrey Beall's criteria are used; a higher rate when only open access journals are assessed; the highest rate where only Walt Crawford grayOA journals were screened for deceptive publishing practices. In all cases, we found a very high false discovery rate even when using reasonable values for the sensitivity and specificity rate for Beall's screening criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predatory open access is a controversial publishing business model that exploits the open-access system by charging publication fees in the absence of transparent editorial services. The credibility of academic publishing is now seriously threatened by predatory journals, whose articles are accorded real citations and thus contaminate the genuine scientific records of legitimate journals. This is of particular concern for public health since clinical practice relies on the findings generated by scholarly articles. Aim of this study was to compile a list of predatory journals targeting the neurosciences and neurology disciplines and to analyze the magnitude and geographical distribution of the phenomenon in these fields. Eighty-seven predatory journals operate in neurosciences and 101 in neurology, for a total of 2404 and 3134 articles issued, respectively. Publication fees range 521–637 USD, much less than those charged by genuine open-access journals. The country of origin of 26.0–37.0% of the publishers was impossible to determine due to poor websites or provision of vague or non-credible locations. Of the rest 35.3–42.0% reported their headquarters in the USA, 19.0–39.2% in India, 3.0–9.8% in other countries. Although calling themselves “open-access”, none of the journals retrieved was listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals. However, 14.9–24.7% of them were found to be indexed in PubMed and PubMed Central, which raises concerns on the criteria for inclusion of journals and publishers imposed by these popular databases. Scholars in the neurosciences are advised to use all the available tools to recognize predatory practices and avoid the downsides of predatory journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of predatory journals is constantly growing and creating a major threat. Researchers in biomedical sciences should be aware of predatory publishers and be able to recognize them. The aim of this study is to assess biomedical researchers' knowledge about predatory journals both before and after showing them an infographic explaining these journals and their publishing model. This study was conducted with a sample of biomedical researchers and students. Subjects answered two questionnaires, one before explaining a designed infographic to each participant through a direct face-to-face interview. A total of 158 participants were included in this study, with a mean age of 22.6 (±1.72) years. They were 122 (77.2%) undergraduates and 36 (22.8%) graduate students. The median number of research projects our subjects participated in was 1 (0–5), and the median number of published projects was 0 (0–3). Awareness of predatory journals or Beall's List improved from 7% and 2.5%, respectively, before the infographic to 97.5% and 94.9% after the infographic. Our results indicate the beneficial use of the designed infographic to improve young researchers' awareness of predatory journals. We encourage research institutions and universities to effectively spread awareness of predatory journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a matter of career choice, doctors have to choose between becoming an ‘academic’ or a ‘practitioner.’ To conduct research and publish articles in scientific journals is compulsory for the academic professional and mostly optional for the latter. The Medical Council of India has revised the eligibility qualifications for medical teachers over the past decade, and has now come out with regulations for streamlining the process of promotion by focusing on scientific papers, apart from clarifying on required experience and qualifications. ‘Predatory publishers’ are proliferating across the world, exploiting the reach of the Internet, and are enticing naïve professionals to publish their research work with them. The pitfalls of paid publishing in such journals may tarnish upcoming careers if doctors are not cautious. For a price, there are many publishers who will process articles without even rudimentary peer review; and for the sake of padding up of the resume, this Faustian bargain may eventually prove detrimental to authors, and thus with their professional credibility at stake, may prove to be a Hobson's choice. It is suggested for authors to make a wise choice and a correct decision when selecting a journal to submit their manuscripts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing demand on academics and researchers to publish has led to the development of fake journals (also known as predatory journals). Such journals lack peer review and precipitate unfair criticism toward legitimate open access journals. Predatory journals tend to bombard a researcher's mailbox on a daily basis, inviting authors to submit a review/manuscript/opinion/short case to their journal while promising expedited publication - against a fee. This study assessed the unsolicited emails received over the period of November 2017 by a young and by a senior researcher. The young researcher received a substantially higher amount of emails (n = 101) compared to the senior researcher (n = 23). The article processing costs for solicited journals received, ranged between $49 and $3019. These journals are almost all only indexed in Google Scholar and do not display any meaningful journal metrics. Furthermore, the majority of the unsolicited emails were not relevant to the researcher's field of study. Therefore authors and readers alike should evaluate emails received with regard to journal legitimacy prior to submission of work to possibly predatory journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• How trustworthy is the editorial process in fee-charging journals? • Our study reveals the poor quality standards applied by some Open Access Journals, which require Article Processing Charges. • Not all Article Processing Charges Journals are predatory. • There is a (too) large presence of predatory journals among Article Processing Charges Journals. This paper aims to unmask the inadequacy of the review process of a sample of fee-charging journals in economics. We submitted a bait-manuscript to 104 academic economic journals to test whether there is a difference in the peer-review process between Article Processing Charges (APC) journals and Traditional journals which do not require a publication fee. The submitted bait-article was based on completely made-up data, with evident errors in terms of methodology, literature, reporting of results, and quality of language. Nevertheless, about half of the APC journals fell in the trap. Their editors accepted the article in the journals and required to pay the publication fee. We conclude that the Traditional model has a more effective incentive-mechanism in selecting articles, based on quality standards. Otherwise, we confirm that the so-called "Predatory Journals" – i.e. academic journals which accept papers without a quality check – exploit the APC scheme to increase their profits. They are also able to enter whitelists (e.g. Scopus, COPE). Accordingly, poor-quality articles published on APC journals shed the light on the weakness of methodologies based on a mechanical inclusion of academic journals in scientific database indexes, succeeding in being considered for bibliometric evaluations of research institutions or scholars' productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world wide web has brought about a paradigm shift in the way medical research is published and accessed. The ease with which a new journal can be started/hosted by publishing start-ups is unprecedented. The tremendous capabilities of the world wide web and the open access revolution when combined with a highly profitable business have attracted unscrupulous fraudulent operators to the publishing industry. The intent of these fraudulent publishers is solely driven by profit with utter disregard to scientific content, peer reviews and ethics. This phenomenon has been referred to as “predatory publishing”. The “international” tag of such journals often betrays their true origins. The gold open access model of publishing, where the author pays the publisher, when coupled with a non-existent peer review threatens to blur the distinction between science and pseudoscience. The average researcher needs to be made more aware of this clear and present danger to the scientific community. Prevention is better than cure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]