[This article initially appeared in the March 2018 edition of Critical Links, and is updated here with corrections and additional information.]
Committed skeptics are often in the habit of viewing the content of Facebook pages and Internet publications with a solid level of skepticism, and many us have become practiced at detecting obviously bogus news shared by family, friends, and associates, using our own on-line research skills to confirm or refute suspect claims. However, as publishing becomes easier, we need to keep our skeptical eyebrow raised as we watch for journals that appear to be reputable but in fact are not science-based. These publications have the purpose of pushing pseudo-science and/or making money from advertisers, and many of them have been very successful at one or both of these pursuits.
Quick quiz:
Which of the following is a reputable source of information?
- The American Research Journal of BioScience
- Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering & Sciences Publication
- The Center for Innovations in Business & Management Practice
- The International Academy of Business and Economics
Please keep reading for the answer.
Jeffrey Beall is a librarian and an associate Professor at the University of Colorado. Beall became concerned about the low quality of articles published in open access journals. An open access journal is a journal that is available to readers on-line at no cost. In other words, the journals that I typically use to research information. As a result, in 2010, Beall began to publish Beall’s List, a list of predatory publishers.
“Predatory publishers” are journals that charge scientists a fee to publish their research papers, and that do not peer review these articles prior to publication. Unfortunately, Beall removed his list in 2017 without explanation; which, has led to seemingly unsubstantiated rumors about the reasons for its removal. Thankfully, archived and cached copies still exist. A new website, Stop Predatory Journals * has extracted an archived copy of Beall’s list and will be maintaining the list. Stop predatory journals claims that Beall removed his list due to harassment and threats, and, as a result, the new site will maintain the anonymity of contributors.
CFIC science chair Blythe Nilson confirms the need to confirm the legitimacy of journal articles before quoting them. She acknowledges that while it is relatively easy for a scientist to identify the journals that are legitimate in their field, this is much more difficult for a lay person. She offers the following suggestions for people questioning the legitimacy of a journal article:
1. Check an archived version of Beall’s List – if it’s there, its predatory
2. Check a “white list” of reputable journals such as PubMed or Web of Science.
3. Google the journal name with “scam” in your search engine and see what comes up.
Think, Check, Submit also offers the following red flags:
* Many journals all starting up at the same time with few to no issues out;
* Journals with titles indicating an excessively broad mandate (e.g. The International Journal of Business, Humanities and Technology)
* Inconsistent formatting of author names and/or titles; a suspicious number of spelling and/or grammatical errors;
* Mismatch between the location in the journal title and where the journal is based. Or journal titles indicating they are international but the entire editorial board is located in a single country;
* Promise of a suspiciously short turnaround time for papers submitted to its journals. A peer review typically takes many months.
Dr. Nilson adds to watch out for journals that charge to publish or promise to publish pretty much anything.
Back to our quiz: It was a bit of a trick question. All of these journals are listed on Beall’s list and believed to be predatory in nature. It seems that we need to do research on where we do our research if we want to accurately check facts. And CFIC strongly encourages fact checking to ensure that the skeptics don’t become part of the fake news problem.
* Please note that a previous version of this article used the URL “predatoryjournals<dot>com”, originally cited by the researchers who highlighted this issue in their paper (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7237319/ ), however this .com site has been taken over by cybersquatters. The information is currently available at https://www.predatoryjournals.org/the-list/journals/