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Predatory publishing: pitfalls for the unwary!

Simon Huggard Digital Infrastructure Manager Sharon Karasmanis Faculty Librarian and Team Leader (Health Sciences)

Library Research Forum, 25 October 2013

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Predatory Publishers:

• Gold Open Access Model has created opportunities for corrupt publishers to flourish

• Open Access mandates have spawned more of these recently, with a huge increase in reports of questionable email requests

• Only exist to extract author processing fees (often only charging when the manuscript accepted)

• Take advantage of authors who want to publish in Open Access journals, note: new PhD graduates targeted!

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Predatory publishers – some characteristics:

• Use similar names to well known publications (e.g. IJCEE: International Journal of Civil & Environemental Engineering vs International Journal of Environmental Engineering)

• Websites littered with grammatical errors

• No peer-review process or bogus reviewer details

• Spam researchers, soliciting manuscripts but failing to mention required author fee. After the paper is published, authors are invoiced typically US$1,800

• List bogus contact details (tricky to spot!)

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How can you check?

• Look for publishers verifiable contact details, be cautious if only a web form is provided!

• Does the editorial board list recognised experts with affiliations

• Check that author fees are prominently displayed

• Be wary of email invitations

• Read previous papers and assess the quality

• Check peer-review process is clearly described, try to confirm if the displayed impact factor is correct!

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More on checking:

• Check Beall’s list of Predatory Publishers

• scholarlyoa.com/2012/12/06/bealls-list-of-predatory-publishers-2013/

• Further reading:

• LibGuide on Predatory Publishing in: latrobe.libguides.com/journalimpact

• Butler, D. (2013). Investigating journals: the dark side of publishing, Nature, 495(7442), 433-435. (Describes the emergence of predatory publishing

and provides an alternate view of the Beall’s list)

• Bohannon, J. (2013). Who’s afraid of peer-review? Science, 342. (Spoof paper concocted by Science reveals little scrutiny by some predatory journals)

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• Upload a submitted manuscript or postprint of your article to Research Online (LTU research repository)

• Article will be available freely online

• No article processing fees

• Contact repository@latrobe.edu.au

Consider Green Open Access!

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One example:

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Predatory/bogus publishers

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Where to Publish: evaluating journals

• What are the main issues?

• Publishing in high impact scholarly journals

• Selecting journals relevant to your discipline

• Where are other experts in your discipline publishing?

• Identifying a journal in consideration of ERA, FoR codes and impact factors

• Ensuring your research is reaching relevant audiences

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What quality factors should I look for?

• Use a range of criteria and compare with other journals in the same category

• Quantitative and qualitative assessments such as:

• Journal impact factors

• Indexing and abstracting services

• Relevance to your discipline

• Ranking within your discipline

• Peer review process

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A range of Library resources are available: (under Databases Tab)

• Journal Citation Reports (JCR)

• Eigenfactor calculation

• Scopus Journal Analyzer (SJR)

• SCImago (uses SJR data)

• InCites

• Further guidance available:

• latrobe.libguides.com/journalimpact

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• Contact your Faculty Librarian

• latrobe.edu.au/library/contact-us

• Research Education and Development (RED)

• latrobe.edu.au/research/red

• Research Services

• latrobe.edu.au/research-services