Predatory publishers: the bane of Open Access publishing

Dr Carina van Zyl CSIR Information Services4 June 2014

Roadmap

• Where to publish• Definition of predatory & imposter publishers• Jeffrey Beall’s list of predatory publishers

– Criteria to evaluate publishers• Case studies

– Evidence of lack of peer review process• Quality of conferences• Summary• References

Closed access vs. Open Access vs. Predator

Where to publish

• CSIR guidelines– Proof of peer review– Editorial board members – Lists of accredited journals

• Funders punish open access dodgers– Wellcome Trust– NIH– UK universities

Spam e-mail

Predatory and imposter publishers

• Predatory publishers use deception to appear legitimate, entrapping researchers into submitting their work and then charging them to publish it

– exploit the author-pays model of open-access publishing for their own profit

– spam professional e-mail lists to solicit manuscripts and editorial board memberships

– operate with a false-front or non-existent peer review process – pay little attention to digital preservation

• Imposter publishers create fake websites of real journals and collect money from authors without even publishing the work

Useful links

• Beall’s List of Predatory Open Access Publishershttp://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/

• Article in The Scientist with comments by researchers

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/32426/title/Predatory-Publishing/

“Poor quality OA publishers funded by article processing fees (APCs) are a problem, but it is nowhere near as serious as Beall asserts”

Criteria to evaluate publishers

Determine whether the publisher commits any of the following practices that are known to be committed by predatory publishers:

Editor and staff• Editorial board members without affiliation, experience or contact

detail• Have the same board for more than one journal• Include scholars on an editorial board without their knowledge

Business management• Have no policies or practices for digital preservation • Begin operations with a large fleet of journals, often using a

template of an existing journal to quickly create each journal’s home page

Criteria to evaluate publishers (cont 1)

Integrity• Falsely claim to have an impact factor (e.g. view factor)• Use spam e-mail requesting peer reviews from scholars

unqualified to review submitted manuscripts • Falsely claim to have the publisher’s content indexed in legitimate

abstracting and indexing services• Falsely claim to have a peer review process• Evidence of repeated cases of plagiarism

Other practices of poor journal standards (not always equal to predatory criteria)

• Poorly maintained websites including dead links & grammatical errors

Criteria to evaluate publishers (cont 2)

• Publish broad journals and combine fields not normally treated together e.g. International Journal of Business, Humanities and Technology

• Require immediate copyright transfer on submission • Lack of published article retraction policy, no corrections are

published• Use e-mail addresses that ends in .gmail.com, .yahoo.com or other

free e-mail suppliers• Display prominent statements that promise rapid publication,

quick review• Focus on authors (not readers) and on getting their fees, providing

no value adds to readers such as RSS feeds, hot-linked references, links to data

•

InTech Open Access Publisher

• Croatia-based publisher with clever disguise. Anybody can, for a price, get their work published

• Several name changes: I-Tech Education and Publishing to In-Tech to Sciyo to InTech

• Beall: “If your colleagues want to publish there, that's fine. Personally, I would not publish with them.”http://poynder.blogspot.com/2011/10/oa-interviews-intechs-nicola-rylett.html

• InTech reply: “However, this is something that unfortunately we must contend with and we shall continue to engage with Mr. Beall in the hope that he will reverse his position and ensure that his readers are informed rather than misinformed.”

Proof-of-peer-review

• Although not on Beall’s list, not recommended as they donot have a peer review process

• Publisher: reply: “Perform only a process of in-house review, i.e. we assess the actuality of the topic, the marketability of the book and the readers' interest toward the topic. Thus, we do not perform a peer-review. Nevertheless we always try to publish only high-end manuscripts, which have already been assessed by experts and parts of which have already been published in peer-reviewed journals.”

• http://chrisnf.blogspot.com/2010/06/lambert-academic-publishing-continues.html

• The Australian Higher Education Research Data Collection (HERDC) explicitly excludes Lambert books

Journal of Cloud Computing

• Two publishers each have a journal with the same title:

• Journal of Cloud Computing by SpringerOpen started in 2012, has 19 articles, a large editorial board and several editors . The price to publish is $785 and it is not on Beall’s list

• Journal of Cloud Computing by IBIMA Publishing started in 2011, has 2 articles and only an editor-in-chief. The price to publish is $295 and it is on the Beall’s list.

Journal of Cloud Computing

On the predatory list of Beall Not predatory

Started in 2011 (claimed?) Started in 2012

Only has 2 articles 19 articles

Only one editor-in-chief Large editorial board and several editors

Price to publish $295 Price to publish $785

Cost of Open Access publishing

• Average cost $1,450 for 24 respondents (9 with a fund set up and several had subscriptions which greatly reduce OA fees) - Survey, Megan Jaskowiak, Bradley University, Peoria IL, 2014

• PLoS fees vary from $1,350 to $2,900 http://www.plos.org/publish/pricing-policy/publication-fees

• Selective list of open access fees, University of California Berkeley http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/scholarlycommunication/oa_fees.html

Tangled web. The location of a journal's publisher, editor, and bank account are often continents apart.

J Bohannon Science 2013;342:60-65

Published by AAAS

http://scim.ag/OA-Sting

Results from case study on fake article

• 304 articles submitted in 2013– 29 websites abandoned by their creators– 20 paper still under review

• 255 sub-total submitted– 157 accepted (62%)– 98 rejected (38%)– 36 review comments on scientific problems– 16 accepted despite damning reviews

• 82% of publishers on Beall’s list accepted the article• 45% of publishers on Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) accepted

• http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/10/03/228859954/some-online-journals-will-publish-fake-science-for-a-fee

• http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full

Reaction of publishers

• Wolters Kluwer bought into OA Medknow journals– committed to OA code of conduct and closed down Journal of Natural

Pharmaceuticals

• SAGE Journal of International Medical Research– requested $3100 before 2nd phase of detailed technical editing – took responsibility, but said acceptance would not have guaranteed

publication– an element of trust is needed for research carried out in disadvantaged

countries and Bohannon’s activities detracted from that trust

• Kobe Journal of Medical Sciences– the author withdrew the paper upon receiving the letter of acceptance

and therefore our letter of acceptance...has no effect whatsoever

• 29 websites abandoned by their creators• 20 paper still under review• 255 sub-total submitted• 157 accepted (62%)• 98 rejected (38%)• 36 review comments on scientific problems• 16 accepted despite damning reviews• 82% of publishers on Beall’s list accepted• 45% of publishers on Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) accepted

• http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/10/03/228859954/some-online-journals-will-publish-fake-science-for-a-fee

• http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full

Reaction of publishers (cont)

• Drug Invention Today published by Elsevier, but not owned by them – Elsevier applies a set of criteria to all journals before hosting them and

will conduct another review on their criteria

• PLoS ONE from Public Library of Science– ethical problems noted– rejected the paper 2 weeks later on basis of its scientific quality

• Hindawi rejected the article – it is a relief that our system is working

Caution: One in every five publishers on Beall’s list is also in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)

What about the quality of conferences?

• Flattering e-mail and not selective. Why am I invited? Am I being asked to chair a session not in my field?

• Check scientific / programme committee & affiliations• Evaluate the conference programme• Check that the venue exists • Ask for printed material and signed documents to be mailed to

you. Always ask for an official receipt of payment• Contact keynote speakers to make sure they are / were affiliated

with the conference. Ask them about the quality of previous conferences

• Beware if the registration fee includes travel packages, hotel & meals by a profit company

Summary

• “Scientific literacy must include the ability to recognize publishing fraud.” Nature 489, 179,13 Sep 2012

• At the CSIR we educate our researchers to:– be able to make informed decisions when submitting an article

or serving on an editorial board – also evaluate the content of articles and journals – use the CSIR criteria, the lists of accredited journals, Beall’s list

of predatory Open Access journals and the criteria for the evaluation of publishers, the impact factor of journals

– contact an information specialist when in doubt and to speak to their mentors / colleagues

References

Articles / links marked with an asterisk are highly recommended for reading

1. Funders punish open-access dodgers. Richard van Noorden. Nature, 508 (7495), 161, 10 Apr 2014. http://www.nature.com/news/funders-punish-open-access-dodgers-1.15007

2. *Beall’s list: Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers. http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/

3. Predatory publishing. Jeffrey Beall, The Scientist, 1 Aug 2012. http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/32426/title/Predatory-Publishing/

4. *Some Online Journals Will Publish Fake Science, For A Fee. Richard Knox, Shots Health news from NPR, 3 Oct 2013. http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/10/03/228859954/some-online-journals-will-publish-fake-science-for-a-fee

References (cont)

5. *Who's Afraid of Peer Review? John Bohannon, Science, 342 (6154), 60-65, 4 Oct 2013. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full Explore an interactive version of the map at http://scim.ag/OA-Sting

6. The OA Interviews: InTech’s Nicola Rylett, 25 Oct 2011.http://poynder.blogspot.com/2011/10/oa-interviews-intechs-nicola-rylett.html

7. Lambert Academic Publishing continues to spam, 7 Jun 2010. http://chrisnf.blogspot.com/2010/06/lambert-academic-publishing-continues.html

8. Australian Higher Education Research Data Collection (HERDC) criteria and verification requirements http://www.csu.edu.au/research/performance/herdc/criteria

9. Predatory publishers are corrupting open access. Jeffrey Beall, Nature 489, 179,13 Sep 2012: http://www.nature.com/news/predatory-publishers-are-corrupting-open-access-1.11385

References on conferences

10. Science Podcast , 4 Oct 2013. Jon Cohen talks with Sarah Crespi about sparsely attended conferences that maybe taking advantage of unsuspecting scientists http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/133.2.full

11. Personal communication, 2013. Criteria adapted from Elsevier and IEEE checklists that are being used before indexing conferences/ proceedings.

12. *Union of International Associations, Fraud Monitor http://www.uia.org/fraud-monitor

13. *Union of International Associations, Checklist to help identify fraudulent conference announcements http://www.uia.org/fraud-checklist

Any questions?