The scientific predator has evolved – here’s how you can fight back

Today’s post was written by Simon Linacre, Director of International Marketing and Development at Cabells, and Irfan Syed, Senior Writer and Editor at Editage Insights.

How do you identify a predatory journal? Easy, look up your spam folder – say seasoned researchers.

Actually, this ‘initial indicator’ is often the key to identifying a predatory journal. Predatory publishers send researchers frequent emails soliciting manuscripts and promising acceptance – messages that, thanks to the email service provider’s parameters, usually go straight to junk mail. Some cleverly disguised ones do make it to the inbox though, and sometimes, unwary researchers click one of these mails, unleashing the predator and an all-too-familiar sequence of events: Researcher sends manuscript. Receives quick acceptance often without a peer review. Signs off copyright. Receives a staggeringly large invoice. Is unable to pay. Asks to withdraw. Receives equally heavy withdrawal invoice – and threats. The cycle continues, the publisher getting incrementally coercive, the researcher increasingly frustrated.

What makes a predator

The term predatory journal was coined by Jeffrey Beall, former Scholarly Initiatives Librarian at the University of Denver, Colorado, in 2010, when he launched his eponymous list (now archived) of fake scientific journals, with an aim to educate the scientific community. The term was supposed to mirror the guile of carnivores in the wild: targeting the weak, launching a surprise ambush, and effecting a merciless finish.

A more academic definition might be: “Entities that prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship and are characterized by false or misleading information, deviation from best editorial and publication practices, a lack of transparency, and/or the use of aggressive and indiscriminate solicitation practices.” In other words, journals that put commerce before science.

Dubious scientific journals have existed since the 1980s. They were born to lend an easy passage out of the arduous road to acceptance laid by top-rung journals. Recently, they have received a boost from the rise of the open access (OA) movement, which seeks to shift the balance of power towards the researcher. However, with revenues now accruing from the author side, new researchers pressured by a ‘publish or perish’ culture have proved easy targets for predatory publishers that exploit the OA publishing model.

The new face of predation

Today, academia faces another threat, a new predator in scientific communications – predatory author services. The dangers of using predatory author services can be just as acute as those of predatory journals. Authors who pay for such services are risking the abuse of any funding they have received by in turn funding potentially criminal activity. Such predatory author services may not be equipped to make quality edits to an author’s paper – incorrect edits, changes in the author’s intended meaning, and unidentified errors may adversely affect the author’s manuscript. Many authors choose such services to improve their articles and increase their chances of acceptance in high-quality journals, but they are very likely to be disappointed in light of the quality of services they receive.

So, the issue of predatory author services is just as problematic as it is with predatory journals. Despite the efforts of industry bodies such as COPE, it seems there are new players entering the market and even advertising on social media platforms such as Facebook. More worryingly, examples of these predatory services seem to include a veneer of sophistication hitherto not seen before, including well-designed websites, live online chat features, and direct calling.

Spotting a predatory author service

The good news is that these services bear many of the traits of predatory journals, and can be identified with a little background research. Here are some tips on how to separate predatory author services from professional operations such as Cactus’ Editage:

• Check the English: For a legitimate journal to have spelling or grammar errors on its site or published articles would be a heinous crime, but this should go double for an author services provider. So, beyond the slick graphics and smiling model faces, check if everything is as it should appear by a thorough check of the English
• Click the links: Dead links, links that loop back to the homepage, or links that don’t match the text should further raise your suspicion
• Research the partnerships: If a provider genuinely works with Web of Science, Scopus, and The Lancet, there should be evidence of that rather mere logos copied and pasted onto the homepage. Search online for these publicized partnerships to know if they are genuine
• Look up the provenance: Many predatory operators leave no address at all. Some though will choose to include a fake address (which turns out to be a long-abandoned dry-cleaning store on a deserted high street or a legitimate address that’s also home to 1,847 other registered companies). A quick search on Google Maps will show whether the address does map
• Run if you spot a ghost: The surest giveaway of a predatory author service is the offering of ghostwriting as a service. Ghost authorship, the act of someone else authoring your entire manuscript, is a violation of research integrity. And when even ghostwriting doesn’t suffice, these services are happy to plagiarize another author’s work and pass it off as the client’s own
• Ask your peers: Before deciding to use a service, double-check any testimonials on the provider’s homepage or ask around in your peer network.

Taking on the predator – collectively and individually

The scientific predator will no doubt continue to evolve, getting more sophisticated with time. Ultimately, all anyone can do to eradicate predatory author services or journals is to increase awareness among authors and provide resources to help them identify such predators. Cabells, Cactus, and many other industry players continually work to provide this guidance, but a good deal of the burden of responsibility has to be shared by academic researchers themselves. As the Romans might have said, caveat scriptor – author beware!

For any authoring service ad or mail you come across, look it up. Search on the net, ask your fellow researchers, pose a query in a researcher forum, go through recommended journal indices of quality and predatory publications such as those of Cabells. If it’s genuine, it will show up in several searches – and you will live to publish another day.

For further help and support in choosing the right journal or author services, go to: www.cabells.com or www.editage.com.