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How to avoid publishing your groundbreaking research in predatory journals?

Are you under pressure to publish and you receive an email encouraging you to submit your work for immediate publication? Learn to avoid predatory journal!

As an early career researcher, you may feel pressure to publish your work. And that’s understandable. We need to publish our research in scholarly journals that use the peer-review process to ensure the high quality of your research. Your academic progression at your university may also depend on your track record of publications in academic journals. 

However, if you don’t have sufficient support or are encouraged to publish as much as possible, you may feel under significant pressure to cut corners. 

I’m not saying that you’ll do this. 

But there’ll be people who’ll get excited when they receive an email from an unfamiliar journal asking them to submit their research. I know it seems that someone has recognised your work. But remember, credible journals WILL NOT ASK YOU TO SUBMIT YOUR WORK unless they have a special issue or the publisher launch a new peer-reviewed journal. 

I’m also not saying that publishing in Q3/Q4 journals by impact factor is something that we shouldn’t do. After all, we cannot judge that a specific title is a low-quality journal solely based on its impact factor. As long as you publish in legitimate journals that respect the peer-review process, gather a relevant audience and are published by a reputable publisher, your research should achieve the impact it deserves. 

However, under some circumstances, people will put quantity over quality. If you read my previous blog, you should always put QUALITY over quantity

I decided to write this article because I’m high worried about the quality of publishing in science and the integrity of the scientific community.  

When engaging with you via several Facebook groups, I noticed many people offering to get your research published in the “peer-reviewed” journals in a couple of days. Sadly, people try to use predatory publishing to take advantage of researchers who strive to share their research. 

Here’s what you need to know about the common characteristics of predatory journals.  

How to write a research paper and avoid predatory journals during your phd and research project

What are predatory journals?

Predatory publishing is an exploitative and unethical practice that charges you the article processing charges (APC) to make your research open access without the rigorous peer-review process that you would expect from legitimate journals.

A great explanation of how predatory-open access journal differs from the reputable journal was given by Grudniewicz et al. (2019) in Nature. Here it is:

Predatory journals and publishers are entities that prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship and are characterized by false or misleading information, deviation from best editorial and publication practices, a lack of transparency, and/or the use of aggressive and indiscriminate solicitation practices.” 

What are the common characteristics of predatory journals?

Luckily for us, there are several common characteristics that we can use to identify deceptive journals and avoid publishing in them. 

One of the most common ways to check whether the journal is predatory is to check Jeffrey Beall’s list of potential predatory open-access publishers

This page gives you a list of publishers and standalone journals that meet Beall’s criteria for poor journal standards and practices. And remember, journal impact reports are not the only way to check the journal quality!

Building on Beall’s work, Eriksson and Helgesson have come up with a list of 25 characteristics that may indicate that the journal deviates from the gold standard of scholarly publishing. 

For your benefit, you can read their full work here. I just quote the key characteristics of a predatory journal. When you benchmark the journal against this list, remember that the more you can tick off, the more likely it is that the journal is predatory. 

If you don’t have time to read through the entire list below, these characteristics can be broadly divided into 4 categories: 

– false or misleading information, including fake impact factors, wrong email address or fake editor

– deviation from gold publishing standards, including  fake peer review or lack of peer review

– lack of transparency, including information on author fees, instructions for authors, no citation metrics

– aggressive solicitation, including repeated predatory publishing emails (i.e. unsolicited emails) that ask you to submit your work urgently

The criteria set out by Eriksson and Helgesson are:

  1. “The publisher is not a member of any recognized professional organisation committed to best publishing practices (like COPE or EASE)
  2. The journal is not indexed in well-established electronic databases (like Medline or Web of Science)
  3. The publisher claims to be a “leading publisher” even though it just got started
  4. The journal and the publisher are unfamiliar to you and all your colleagues
  5. The papers of the journal are of poor research quality, and may not be academic at all (for instance allowing for obvious pseudo-science)
  6. There are fundamental errors in the titles and abstracts, or frequent and repeated typographical or factual errors throughout the published papers
  7. The journal website is not professional
  8. The journal website does not present an editorial board or gives insufficient detail on names and affiliations
  9. The journal website does not reveal the journal’s editorial office location or uses an incorrect address
  10. The publishing schedule is not clearly stated
  11. The journal title claims a national affiliation that does not match its location (such as” American Journal of …” while being located on another continent) or includes ”international” in its title while having a single-country editorial board
  12. The journal mimics another journal title or the website of said journal
  13. The journal provides an impact factor in spite of the fact that the journal is new (which means that the impact cannot yet be calculated)
  14. The journal claims an unrealistically high impact based on spurious alternative impact factors (such as 7 for a bioethics journal, which is far beyond the top notation)
  15. The journal website posts non-related or non-academic advertisements
  16. The publisher of the journal has released an overwhelmingly large suite of new journals at one occasion or during a very short period of time
  17. The editor in chief of the journal is editor in chief also for other journals with widely different focus
  18. The journal includes articles (very far) outside its stated scope
  19. The journal sends you an unsolicited invitation to submit an article for publication, while making it blatantly clear that the editor has absolutely no idea about your field of expertise
  20. Emails from the journal editor are written in poor language, include exaggerated flattering (everyone is a leading profile in the field), and make contradictory claims (such as “You have to respond within 48 h” while later on saying “You may submit your manuscript whenever you find convenient”)
  21. The journal charges a submission or handling fee, instead of a publication fee (which means that you have to pay even if the paper is not accepted for publication)
  22. The types of submission/publication fees and what they amount to are not clearly stated on the journal’s website
  23. The journal gives unrealistic promises regarding the speed of the peer review process (hinting that the journal’s peer review process is minimal or non-existent)—or boasts an equally unrealistic track-record
  24. The journal does not describe copyright agreements clearly or demands the copyright of the paper while claiming to be an open access journal
  25. The journal displays no strategies for how to handle misconduct, conflicts-of-interests, or secure the archiving of articles when no longer in operation

If you notice any of these predatory practices, please check whether you’re not dealing with predatory journals. 

Why should predatory journals be avoided?

We all want to publish our work in high-quality journals. This helps us to build a strong track record and recognition for our research.

The challenge is that the true peer-review process at prestigious journals tends to take time. Legitimate publishers take the ethical standards seriously and ask 2-5 experts in your field to evaluate your manuscript before the editor decides whether to accept your work for publication. 

So why predatory journals exist? Well, such questionable journals offer you a chance to publish your work in a couple of days or weeks rather than months or years.

It’s tempting, therefore, to submit to such journals, especially if you’re close to the end of your research programme and still need to publish your work. 

But here’s why you should avoid publishing in predatory journals: 

– your work WILL NOT be peer-reviewed, so the potential quality issues will not be corrected

– you WILL BE CHARGED author fees, regardless of whether your work is published

– your work WILL NOT BE INDEXED and, therefore, other researchers will not be able to access it and cite it

– your work WILL NOT achieve the impact it deserves 

– your work CAN BE STOLEN and published by other researchers in a more prestigious journal 

How to verify a publisher and avoid predatory journals? 

Here’s the academic publishing rule 101. Journals offered by legitimate publishers will not ask you to urgently send your work and promise rapid peer review to publish it in a couple of days or weeks. Be suspicious when you get an invitation from unknown journal. 

How do you identify publishers and journals to share your high-quality research in and avoid getting cought by a predatory publisher?

When selecting a suitable journal for your research, check whether it is indexed in standard databases, such as Scopus and Web of Science. 

If you want to publish in the open-access journal, it’s good to check the Directory of Open Access Journals. Be careful though as work by Grudniewicz et al. (2019) indicated that some journals in DOAJ can be published by predatory publishers (although a very small fraction). If in doubt, check Beall’s list and the list of hijacked journals.

A final word…

We all strive to publish our high-quality research as soon as we produce it. Publication in predatory journals is tempting, because it offers rapid “peer-review” process, usually for a very attractive price. 

But such a rapid peer review and low OA fees come at a cost of your research visibility, impact and recognition. This is something that no one should be willing to pay! 

Have you been approached by predatory journal? 

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Professor Dawid Hanak

Academic Success Coach at Motivated Academic and Professor at Net Zero Industry Innovation Centre, Teesside University

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