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The choice of a scholarly journal, as opposed to a predatory journal, might impact a sport scientist's career negatively if the wrong choice is made, especially at an early stage of their research and publishing careers. Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly impacting sport science and academia. In this study, we tested the accuracy and sensitivity of an AI-driven tool, applied specifically to sport science. Our research relies on the use of a new and free online AI-driven tool, the AJPC System, which claims the ability to distinguish "normal" (scholarly) from "suspected predatory" (unscholarly) journals. The AJPC System was used to assess (1 December 2023) the classification of all ranked sport journals (n = 124), namely those in all four quartiles (Q1–Q4) of SCImago Journal Rank (SJR), in the "Sports Science" category. The AJPC System considered 47/124 journals to be "suspected predatory", mostly in Q4 journals (54.8 % of total), casting a negative image on their academic standing. Sport scientists are likely to consider SJR Q1–Q4 journals to be relatively safe to publish in, reliable and reputable, and might be confused with the "suspected predatory" label assigned to 37.9 % of those journals. The AJPC System is thus misleading sport scientists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to Scopus, China is the nation that produces the highest volume of scientific research but is also the nation with the highest number of retractions, suggesting there are issues connected to research and publishing ethics within the Chinese publishing infrastructure. One source of negative reputation may be the selection of journals with questionable reputation, including "predatory" journals. In 2020, the Center of Scientometrics (CoS) in China established a list of "problematic" journals, called the Chinese Early Warning Journal List (EWJL), the only national watchlist in China, to support Chinese academics and the Ministry of Science and Technology of China. EWJL ranks journals as either low, medium or high risk. There are benefits if EWJL is accurate, valid and complete. However, close examination of the CoS website and EWJL functionality revealed several deficiencies. This paper debates those weaknesses within the wider context of publication in low-quality journals, offering suggestions for improvement that would be necessary for EWJL to become more trustworthy, and to better enable the continual reform of Chinese publishing culture. This issue is important to academic librarians because they can use EWJL in the process of collecting library funds and providing library information, and advice, to researchers. • Accountability Blacklists or watchlists Completeness Faulty criteria Opacity versus transparency [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The objective of this study was to assess how 14 large and established scientific publishers have adopted the use of preprints and how their policies changed in a one-year period between June 2017 and June 2018, if any. The core search was performed using the Sherpa/RoMEO database. Of all publishers (2516, now 2553) listed in the RoMEO database, 80.3% of the publishers examined allow self-archiving, but only half of the publishers (47.3%) allow the archiving of preprints in February of 2018, while this percentage increased to 48% in June 2018. These data were practically constant over a one-year period even as the number of preprint servers has increased. Several exceptions exist among journals within each of the tested Sherpa/RoMEO-indexed publishers, and in some cases, a reversal in policy was observed, i.e., from allowing to no longer allowing the archival of preprints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Faced with a prolonged economic crisis, Ukrainian research institutes are under pressure as a direct result of limited funding. This has also had a direct negative impact on the functionality of librarians who have seen increasing limitations to acquisitions. Despite economic difficulties, Ukrainian academic librarians are trying to offer their end-users specialized services that involve active librarian mediation in the preparation and dissemination of the results of these users' scientific work. One notable function is to offer aid to users on how to detect pseudo-scientific journals. In this paper, based on a survey of librarians from leading Ukrainian universities, we studied for the first time, the main information resources and tools used by Ukrainian experts to test the validity of scientific journals so that they may be recommended to library users as reliable channels for disseminating research results. These are tools and resources include Scopus, Web of Science, Beall's blacklists, the DOAJ, Think. Check. Submit., and the Norwegian Register. We describe the benefits and limitations that Ukrainian academic librarians may encounter when each of these resources is used. Modern reformation to Ukrainian science has opened up new opportunities for Ukrainian academic librarians. As a result, if they are able to successfully implement such services, they can regain a prominent place in the scientific life of institutions and on the global academic platform. [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]

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]

The debate surrounding "predatory publishing" continues to be unable to find entirely effective solutions to dealing with this problem, despite fervent efforts by many academics and policy makers around the world. Given this situation, we were interested in appreciating whether ChatGPT would be able to offer insight and solutions, to complement current human-based efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Jeffrey Beall, a US librarian, coined the term "predatory publishing" specifically to describe a movement or phenomenon of open access (OA) journals and publishers that he and others believed displayed exploitative and unscholarly principles. Using a blog to transmit those ideas, and profiling specific cases using blacklists, one of the most polemic aspects of Beall's blog was its tendency to attract and incite academic radicalism. Beall targeted both publishers and standalone journals, but how he precisely determined that an OA journal or a publisher was predatory was in many cases an ambiguity. Beall's deficient and highly subjective criteria, as well as those blacklists' incapacity to clearly distinguish low quality OA publishers from predatory ones, may have negatively impacted the operations of several Beall-blacklisted OA journals and publishers. Freedom of speech that embraces prejudice, via Beall's blog, and the establishment of "predatory" blacklists, are enhanced discriminatory ideologies that continue to be carried downstream from Beall to and by other like-minded individuals and groups who proliferate academic divisiveness and may also be formalizing and institutionalizing a culture of discriminative philosophies by cloning Beall's blacklists and encouraging their continued use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent article by Mathew et al. (2022) in this journal debates the important issue of honest versus predatory radiology journals. In this letter, I expand the debate by Mathew et al. (2022), focusing on the now-defunct peer reviewer rewards platform, Publons, which was phased out in 2022, but continues to be advertised as a journal's indexing location by a radiology journal of a known predatory publisher, OMICS. In 2023, can the claim of being indexed at Publons, or partnering with Publons for peer reviewer rewards be a potential predatory fingerprint? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The editorial by Meyer et al. offers a realistic reflection of the challenging state of peer review participation in some journals that hold this task to highest standards. With an increasing publishing market that is still heavily quantitatively driven by publish or perish incentives, a limited or finite peer pool of experienced sports scientists, a peer rewards scheme (Publons) that was decommissioned in mid-2022, and the lack of appetite for open peer review, sports journals are faced with challenging times to try and attract peer reviewers, and keep them incentivized. Absent an equitable trade and career-boosting rewards, the crisis in peer review might not be easily resolved. [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]

• The terms "guideline" and "recommendation" suggest a choice is possible. • Are COPE guidelines and ICMJE recommendations mandatory, or voluntary? • Is it possible to not adhere to COPE and/or ICMJE guidelines? • Rules in such guidelines should be open to challenge. • Are there epistemic contradictions in current established ethics guidelines? [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]

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is the most devastating pandemic to affect humanity in a century. In this article, we assessed tests as a policy instrument and policy enactment to contain COVID-19 and potentially reduce mortalities. A model was devised to estimate the factors that influenced the death rate across 121 nations and by income group. Nations with a higher proportion of people aged 65+ years had a higher fatality rate (P = 0.00014). Delaying policy enactment led to a higher case fatality rate (P = 0.0013). A 10% delay time to act resulted in a 3.7% higher case fatality rate. This study found that delaying policies for international travel restrictions, public information campaigns, and testing policies increased the fatality rate. Tests also impacted the case fatality rate, and nations with 10% more cumulative tests per million people showed a 2.8% lower mortality rate. Citizens of nations who can access more destinations without the need to have a prior visa have a significant higher mortality rate than those who need a visa to travel abroad (P = 0.0040). Tests, as a surrogate of policy action and earlier policy enactment, matter for saving lives from pandemics as such policies reduce the transmission rate of the pandemic. • A model estimated factors influencing the death rate from COVID-19. • Nations with more people aged 65+ years have a higher fatality rate. • More tests per million people leads to a lower death rate. • A 10% delay time to act results in a 3.6% higher case fatality rate. • Policies to contain the spread of COVID-19 have other public health effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to a flood of papers and preprints, has placed multiple challenges on academic publishing, the most obvious one being sustained integrity under the pressure to publish quickly. There are risks of this high volume-to-speed ratio. Many letters, editorials, and supposedly "peer reviewed" papers in ranked and indexed journals were published in a matter of days, suggesting that peer review was either fleeting or non-existential, or that papers were rapidly approved by editors based on their perceived interest and topicality, rather than on their intrinsic academic value. In academic publishing circles, the claim of "peer review", when in fact it has not been conducted, is a core characteristic of "predatory publishing", and is also a "fake" element that may undermine efforts in recent years to build trust in science's budding serials crisis. While the world is still centrally focused on COVID-19, the issue of "predatory publishing" is being ignored, or not being given sufficient attention. The risks to the scholarly community, academic publishing and ultimately public health are at stake when exploitative and predatory publishing are left unchallenged. [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]

Cotinus coggygria Scop. (Anacardiaceae), commonly referred to as ‘smoke tree’ or ‘smoke bush’, is an attractive ornamental tree or large bush that has medicinal properties and multiple bioactivities. Seed germination can be high after treating seeds with H 2 SO 4 , but to avoid growing male trees that will not form attractive inflorescences, the rooting of cuttings from female trees is a preferred method of vegetative propagation. One method to intensify the rooting of stem cuttings is by shading mother plants and simultaneously applying an exogenous auxin or biostimulator. This method can increase the quality of rooted cuttings. In addition, shading causes anatomical changes in the stem structure and leads to the formation of adventitious root primordia. New EU regulations have forced member states to change or withdraw existing authorization for products used in plant protection that contain active substances like auxin (indole-3-butyric acid, IBA). Consequently, there is an active search for alternative measures to support the process of rooting woody plants. Examples of such preparations are biostimulators, including AlgaminoPlant, HumiPlant and Route®, which can increase the rooting of cuttings, affect processes associated with oxidative stress, and increase the intensity of gas exchange and the content of organic compounds. The most effective in vitro micropropagation protocol for C. coggygria involves the use of Murashige and Skoog basal solid or liquid media enriched with one of two cytokinins, 6 N -benzyladenine or meta -metoxytopolins. The use of IBA has shown most success, both ex vitro and in vitro . All other aspects of Cotinus species biotechnology still need to be developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of "predatory" publishing continues to affect many scholars around the world who publish. When one reads the fairly vast literature surrounding "predatory" publishing, there is an erroneous tendency to continue pivoting around Jeffrey Beall's blacklists of "predatory" open access (OA) journals and publishers. However, to be "predatory" involves much more than defining a handful of select behaviours, and it is becoming increasingly important to start defining, or curtailing, the lexicon to avoid referring to any journal or publisher that might display one of the following qualities (exploitative, deceptive, excessive, unscrupulous, abusive, advantageous, manipulative, profit-seeking, or others) as synonymously meaning "predatory". This paper focuses mainly on the oft-interchangeable terms "predatory" and "exploitation", and explores the morality of predatory and exploitative actions by applying a deontological ethics approach which implies that certain actions are wrong even if they achieve good consequences, with the understanding that because a predatory entity aims to exploit others, these actions would be considered morally wrong from a deontologist's perspective. In articulating our argument, we attempt to expand the conversation around this important topic, with the hope that it might bring additional clarity to the issue of what might constitute a "predatory" journal or publisher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

African violet ( Saintpaulia ionantha H. Wendl.) (Gesneriaceae) is a popular ornamental pot plant that is easy to culture ex vitro and in vitro relative to other herbaceous ornamentals. This quality makes it an ideal system for in vitro regeneration experiments. This review summarizes the studies that have been conducted on the in vitro culture and micropropagation of this plant. Although shoot regeneration from internodes, floral buds, anthers and protoplasts has been achieved, leaf blades and petioles have been a popular source tissue for regeneration. An effective and reproducible protocol for the direct induction of shoots, without the formation of any intermediary callus, involves the use of a cytokinin like BA or kinetin, usually in combination with an auxin like NAA, both within a concentration range of 0.1 to 1 mg/L, and on a Murashige and Skoog basal medium. Shoots can form in both light and darkness, but most effectively in the light, and rooting can be induced from shoots, even in the absence of an auxin, although a low concentration (0.1–0.5 mg/L) of NAA or IAA is recommended. African violets acclimatize easily, even in a simple soil-based substrate, and can flower within 4 months of transfer to ex vitro conditions. These protocols, including somatic embryogenesis and cryopreservation, may also benefit the in vitro culture and conservation of wild species of Saintpaulia . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This letter to the editors takes a deeper look at the validity and ethics of authorship of a recently published article in Nurse Education in Practice in which authorship was shared with a chatbox software program, ChatGPT (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nepr.2022.103537). In particular, a closer assessment is made of the authorship of that article from the established principles of authorship as delineated by the ICMJE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The symbiosis between α nitrogen (N 2 )-fixing Proteobacteria (family Rhizobiaceae) and legumes belonging to the Fabaceae (a single phylogenetic group comprising three subfamilies: Caesalpinioideae, Mimosoideae and Papilionoideae) results in the formation of a novel root structure called a nodule, where atmospheric N 2 is fixed into NH 3 + . In the determinate type of nodules harbored by Rhizobium -nodulated Fabaceae species, newly synthesized NH 3 + is finally converted into allantoin (C 4 H 6 N 4 O 3 ) and allantoic acid (C 4 H 8 N 4 O 4 ) (ureides) through complex pathways involving at least 20 different enzymes that act synchronously in two types of nodule cells with contrasting ultrastructure, including the tree nodule cell organelles. Newly synthesized ureides are loaded into the network of nodule-root xylem vessels and transported to aerial organs by the transpirational water current. Once inside the leaves, ureides undergo an enzymatically driven reverse process to yield NH 4 + that is used for growth. This supports the role of ureides as key nitrogen (N)-compounds for the growth and yield of legumes nodulated by Rhizobium that grow in soils with a low N content. Thus, a concrete understanding of the mechanisms underlying ureide biogenesis and catabolism in legumes may help agrobiologists to achieve greater agricultural discoveries. In this review we focus on the transmembranal and transorganellar symplastic and apoplastic movement of N-precursors within the nodules, as well as on the occurrence, localization and properties of enzymes and genes involved in the biogenesis and catabolism of ureides. The synthesis and transport of ureides are not unique events in Rhizobium -nodulated N 2 -fixing legumes. Thus, a brief description of the synthesis and catabolism of ureides in non-legumes was included for comparison. The establishment of the symbiosis, nodule organogenesis and the plant’s control of nodule number, synthesis and translocation of ureides via feed-back inhibition mechanisms are also reviewed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]