Features
Predatory Publishing
The Dark Side of the Open- Access Movement
In October 2016 , we dived deep into the open-access ( OA ) movement – a publishing model in which a scientific article is made freely available – examining the benefits and the drawbacks of this approach to research (“ Public Access : The Pros and Cons of Open-Access Publishing ”). This month , we take a closer look at another , darker side of scientific publishing : predatory publishing .
This segment of the OA publishing movement is characterized by publishers that “ unprofessionally exploit ” the gold OA model ( in which the final version of a manuscript is made freely available on publication ), primarily for profit , according to Jeffrey Beall , MSLS , one of the most vigilant watchdogs of predatory publishing , and operator of the website Scholarly Open Access ( scholarlyoa . com ).
Sometimes called “ vanity presses ,” these entities publish practically any materials that come their way , as long as authors are willing to pay a submission and publication fee . Critics – and they are legion – claim that predatory publishers ’ main motivation is monetary profit , not advancing science or making the research landscape more equitable . In addition , while predatory publishers generally do not provide any of the services ( including editorial support or peer review ) traditionally offered by legitimate scientific journals – online , OA , or otherwise – they often falsely claim that they do , and will tell authors that their work has been perused by reviewers who simply do not exist , or has been approved by a “ dummy ” editorial board . 1
An Unexpected Consequence
How did predatory publishers come into being ? Unfortunately , the tremendous success of the OA movement opened the door for predatory publishers , explained Eduardo Franco , MPH , DrPH , the James McGill Professor in the Departments of Oncology and Epidemiology & Biostatistics ; director of the Division of Cancer Epidemiology ; and chairman of the Department of Oncology at McGill University ’ s Faculty of Medicine , in Montreal , Canada .
“ About 16 years ago , when OA was a new concept and still growing , I had never heard about predatory publishers ,” said Dr . Franco , the editor-in-chief of Preventive Medicine , a journal that supports OA , and who serves on the boards of other OA journals . “ There were certainly low-quality journals out there , but there was not a particular predatory business model like the ones we see today .”
That changed around 2006 , when a prominent publisher decided that , because of its stringent selective criteria for submitted manuscripts , it was rejecting too many perfectly good papers , Dr . Franco stated . The solution was to launch an OA journal that would still publish relevant and sound science , but allow for more novel or experimental theories .
“ As the prominence of this OA journal grew , predatory publishers took note of this business model , and saw an opportunity to turn a profit ,” Dr . Franco said . “ So , the success of this OA journal is that traditional journals started to loosen their reins and offer some level of OA , but the downside is that predatory publishers began to invade the existing market .”
And predatory publishers have certainly made their mark in the OA field . According to a 2015 longitudinal study , predatory journals have rapidly boosted their publication volumes from 53,000 articles in 2010 to an estimated 420,000 articles in 2014 , published by around 8,000 active journals . 2
Catching A Predator
Predatory journals have also made a splash with regulatory agencies . In August 2016 , the Federal Trade Commission ( FTC ) filed its first complaint against an alleged predatory publisher . The publisher came to the attention of the FTC after potential authors realized something was amiss with the publication process . ( See the SIDEBAR on page 31 for more about this case .)
“ The people we spoke with thought they were supporting a new journal , and that it was legitimate and above-board ,” Ioana Rusu , JD , an attorney for the FTC , told ASH Clinical News . “ Then , the red flags started going up . For instance , their articles were approved for publication in a matter of days or even hours . The authors asked themselves , ‘ How is it possible that in-depth peer review was done in such a short period of time ?’” Predatory publishers have a number of tactics for appearing as authentic academic publishers . They have been known , for example , to “ grab ” lists of editorial board members from established journals ’ websites ( both OA and traditional ) and transfer them to their own websites , thus giving them an air of legitimacy .
Checking the names on the editorial board , and of published authors , can help distinguish a predatory publisher from a genuine one . For example , content written by an author with a number of articles published in a short period of time or on a wide range of topics irrelevant to the journal ’ s stated area of interest may identify someone who responded to one of the blanket solicitation emails that predatory journals send out to potential authors or editorial board members .
The Blacklist
In general , Mr . Beall , who also is associate professor at the Auraria Library at the University of Colorado in Denver , Colorado , is not the OA movement ’ s biggest fan . In a 2013 article , he decried
OA as “ an anti-corporatist movement that wants to deny the freedom of the press to companies it disagrees with .” He went on to say that “ the movement is actively imposing onerous mandates on researchers , mandates that restrict individual freedom . … They don ’ t like the idea of profit .” 3
For Mr . Beall , one of the OA movement ’ s biggest flaws is that it portrays “ big publishers as the enemy , with some [ OA journal editors ] writing blog posts proclaiming themselves heroes for refusing to publish in or carry out peer reviews for its journals ,” he told ASH Clinical News . “ At the same time , the OA movement largely refuses to acknowledge the weaknesses , problems , and threats caused by the system of payments from authors – the system used to finance most OA publishing .”
Mr . Beall highlights these “ problems and threats ” on his website , Scholarly Open Access ( scholarlyoa . com ), which , according to the website description , engages in “ critical analysis of scholarly open-access publishing .” This includes name-checking publishing groups and standalone journals that may be engaging in predatory publishing practices – all of which are collected into “ Beall ’ s List of Potential , Possible , or Probable Predatory Scholarly Open-Access Publishers .” The list comes with the recommendation that “ scholars read the available reviews , assessments , and descriptions provided [ on Scholarly OA ], and then decide for themselves whether they want to submit articles or serve as editors or on editorial boards .”
Even under such scrutiny , predatory publishers continue to proliferate , according to Mr . Beall , who noted that , in 2011 , the blacklist consisted of less
30 ASH Clinical News January 2017