Predatory publishing

Predatory publishing, also known as write-only publishing or deceptive publishing, is an exploitative and fraudulent academic publishing model in which journals or publishers prioritize their own financial or reputational gain over the advancement of scholarship. It is characterized by misleading or false information about editorial practices, a deviation from standard peer-review procedures, lack of transparency, and the use of aggressive or coercive solicitation tactics to attract authors. Predatory publishers often exploit the pressures on researchers to publish, undermining the integrity and credibility of scholarly communication.

The phenomenon of "open-access predatory publishers" was first noticed by Jeffrey Beall around 2012, when he described "publishers that are ready to publish any article for payment". However, criticisms about the label "predatory" have been raised. A lengthy review of the controversy started by Beall appears in The Journal of Academic Librarianship.

Predatory publishers are so regarded because scholars are tricked into publishing with them, although some authors may be aware that the journal is poor quality or even fraudulent but publish in them anyway. New scholars from developing countries are said to be especially at risk of being misled by predatory publishers. A 2022 report found that "nearly a quarter of the respondents from 112 countries, and across all disciplines and career stages, indicated that they had either published in a predatory journal, participated in a predatory conference, or did not know if they had. The majority of those who did so unknowingly cited a lack of awareness of predatory practices; whereas the majority of those who did so knowingly cited the need to advance their careers.

According to one study, 60% of articles published in predatory journals receive no citations over the five-year period following publication.

Actors seeking to maintain the scholarly ecosystem have sought to minimize the influence of predatory publishing through the use of blacklists such as Beall's List and Cabell's blacklist, as well as through whitelists such as the Directory of Open Access Journals. Nevertheless, identifying (and even providing a quantitative definition) of predatory journals remains difficult, because it is a spectrum rather than a binary phenomenon. In the same issue of a journal it is possible to find articles which meet the highest criteria for scientific integrity, and articles that raise ethical concerns.

In March 2008, Gunther Eysenbach, publisher of an early open-access journal, drew attention to what he called "black sheep among open-access publishers and journals" and highlighted in his blog publishers and journals which resorted to excessive spam to attract authors and editors, criticizing in particular Bentham Science Publishers, Dove Medical Press, and Libertas Academica. In July 2008, Richard Poynder's interview series brought attention to the practices of new publishers who were "better able to exploit the opportunities of the new environment". Doubts about honesty and scams in a subset of open-access journals continued to be raised in 2009.

Concerns for spamming practices from these journals prompted leading open-access publishers to create the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association in 2008. In another early precedent, in 2009 the Improbable Research blog had found that Scientific Research Publishing's journals duplicated papers already published elsewhere; the case was subsequently reported in Nature. In 2010, Cornell University graduate student Phil Davis (editor of the Scholarly Kitchen blog) submitted a manuscript consisting of computer-generated nonsense (using SCIgen), which was accepted for a fee (but withdrawn by the author). Predatory publishers have been reported to hold submissions hostage, refusing to allow them to be withdrawn and thereby preventing submission in another journal.

Predatory publishing does not refer to a homogeneous category of practices. The name itself was coined by American librarian Jeffrey Beall who created a list of "deceptive and fraudulent" Open Access (OA) publishers, which was used as reference until withdrawn in 2017. The term has been reused since for a new for-profit database by Cabell's International. On the one hand, Beall's list as well as Cabell's International database do include truly fraudulent and deceptive OA publishers that pretend to provide services (in particular quality peer review) which they do not implement, show fictive editorial boards and/or ISSN numbers, use dubious marketing and spamming techniques, or even hijacking known titles. On the other hand, they also list journals with subpar standards of peer review and linguistic correction.