It’s time for a more objective view in regard to predatory academic publishing

In response to a recent call for guest editors for a proposed special issue of a Frontiers academic journal, I raised the concern that Frontiers is considered a predatory publisher, after being reminded of this by a colleague.

In the past, RealKM Magazine has published and referenced a number of articles discussing predatory journals. The problem of predatory journal publishing is explored in a 2017 article in University Affairs¹. It alerts that:

predatory journals bombard academics with spam emails, accept almost all submissions and overstate the rigour of their peer-review processes. They also often conveniently neglect to mention publication fees until late in the process.

Also in 2017, a paper² published in the journal BMC Medicine lists the differences between potential predatory and legitimate journals.

Because of the predatory journal label, at least some in the academic community and beyond would consider papers published in a Frontiers special issue to be of questionable quality. There was a time that I would have too, to the point of publicly criticizing such a special issue, as shown for example by my article “Why you need to think twice about responding to this call for knowledge sharing papers.”

However, in the four years since writing that article, I’ve developed a much more nuanced perspective of predatory publishing. Following on from this, information put forward in reply to my concern about Frontiers has helped to make two serious shortcomings in regard to the predatory publishing label very clear, prompting me to write this new article calling for a more objective view in regard to predatory academic publishing.

The coloniality of predatory journal blacklists

One of the serious shortcomings in regard to the predatory publishing label relates to bias. As Roh and colleagues alert in the second chapter³ of the book⁴ Reassembling Scholarly Communications: Histories, Infrastructures, and Global Politics of Open Access, the Latin American publisher SciELO had not only been labelled as predatory, but in a culturally derogatory way:

Scholarship from the Global South is too readily dismissed by researchers in the Global North, due to a publishing system whose standards of quality have been developed for academics in the Global North. Jeffrey Beall, who until recently maintained a list of publishers and journals he considers predatory, has been criticized for unfairly labeling publishers from developing countries predatory. In 2015, Beall called the Latin American publisher SciELO a “publication favela.” Many commentators called out the cultural bias implicit in his use of the term “favela,” stressing the importance of local and regional publishers and the indexing of SciELO in Web of Science and Scopus. In using the term “predatory publishers” to describe publishers in the Global South, Beall tainted the publishers with a conceit of ill-intent, foreclosing the possibility of developmental or capacity issues, rather than examining the problematic capitalist infrastructure of traditional commercial publishing that asks scholars to give away their intellectual property and to pay for the privilege. His inconsistent, and at times factually incorrect, criteria revealed the fallacy of having a checklist that failed to consider context, causing “irreversible reputational damage to authors, editors and publishers. … [Blacklists]⁵ can stigmatize researchers by being associated with them and can be used in a discriminatory manner.” The fallout from Beall’s blacklist goes on as the academic community continues to refer to its principles and conclusions to educate and make decisions on the legitimacy of publications.

However, as the editors of the book Reassembling Scholarly Communications: Histories, Infrastructures, and Global Politics of Open Access write in their conclusion⁶, SciELO is actually arguably the world’s best open access publishing model, and we should all be learning from it! This coloniality in predatory publishing labelling reflects a wider problem that we have started to address through our initiative to decolonize knowledge and ways of knowing⁷.

The pot calling the kettle blacklist?

The other serious shortcoming in regard to the predatory publishing label relates to academic rigor. The actions of predatory publishers can certainly lack rigor. For example, as shown by the case of ‘Dr. Fraud’⁸ where dozens of predatory journals were ready and willing to offer an unqualified fake scientist a place on their editorial boards. However, on the other hand, in nine years of reading many hundreds of papers and chapters for RealKM Magazine and my other knowledge management (KM) research, I’ve also seen numerous highly credible high-quality papers published in journals labelled as predatory, and indeed, used them as the basis for articles.

I’ve also seen a lot of low-quality research published in major publishing house journals that have not been labelled as predatory. Among these are the thousands of paper retractions documented in a different kind of blacklist: Retraction Watch. For example, retractions reported by Retraction Watch in just October this year include 200 papers published by high profile publisher Springer Nature⁹. Among the worst examples of low-quality research being published in major publishing house journals are the papers, now retracted, authored by discredited high-profile Cornell University food researcher Brian Wansink.

In reply to my concern about Frontiers, it was suggested that to directly refute any doubts about a Frontiers special issue, we could simply highlight that the particular Frontiers journal is indexed in a number of academic journal databases including PubMed Central (PMC), Scopus, DOAJ, and CrossRef. However. while the indexing requirements of such databases may help to discourage the publishing of bad science to some degree, they certainly don’t stop it, including in journals not labelled as predatory. For example, Springer Nature is indexed in academic journal databases, but as discussed above, has retracted over 200 papers since September. There have been similar mass retractions of KM papers by indexed publisher IEEE, as discussed in my review of a paper which was itself flawed.

All information sources need to be scrutinized

Also put forward in reply to my concern about Frontiers have been two resources that, in light of the serious shortcomings of predatory publishing labelling revealed above, can help to guide us in what needs to be a much more objective approach going forward. These resources have been produced by COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics), which is committed to educating and supporting editors, publishers, universities, research institutes, and all those involved in publication ethics.

The first of the two resources is the 2015 COPE statement on Frontiers¹⁰, which states that:

We note that there have been vigorous discussions about, and some editors are uncomfortable with, the editorial processes at Frontiers. However, the processes are declared clearly on the publisher’s site and we do not believe there is any attempt to deceive either editors or authors about these processes.

Publishing is evolving rapidly and new models are being tried out. At this point we have no concerns about Frontiers being a COPE member and are happy to work with them as they explore these new models.

The second is the 2023 Identifying fake journals, Statement from COPE Officers¹¹, which states that:

COPE believes that authors and institutions should treat lists of predatory (or fake) journals with the same degree of scrutiny as they do with the journals themselves. Lists that are not transparent about criteria used should not be relied on. Moreover, such lists may perpetuate systemic bias and include journals with limited resources but which are legitimate journals with the best intentions.

In the remainder of this statement, COPE provides links to resources that authors can use before submitting their research to a journal.

COPE’s advice aligns with the ‘Appraising’ step in an evidence-based approach to KM.

Acknowledgements: Thank you to Dr Bebeka Cosandey for alerting me to the very valuable COPE resources referenced in this article.

Header image source: Adapted from Mohamed Hassan on Pixabay.

References: