Simon Linacre Academic Publishing, Peer Review, Scholarly Communication

How do you know you can trust a journal?

As many readers know, this week is Peer Review Week, the annual opportunity for those involved in scholarly communication and research to celebrate and learn about all aspects of peer review. As part of this conversation, Simon Linacre reflects on this year’s theme of ‘Trust in Peer Review’ in terms of the important role of peer review in the validation of scholarship, and dangers of predatory behaviour in its absence.

I was asked to deliver a webinar recently to a community of scholars in Eastern Europe and, as always with webinars, I was very worried about the Q&A section at the end. When you deliver a talk in person, you can tell by looking at the crowd what is likely to happen at the end of the presentation and can prepare yourself. A quiet group of people means you may have to ask yourself some pretty tough questions, as no one will put their hand up at the end to ask you anything; a rowdy crowd is likely to throw anything and everything at you. With a webinar, there are no cues, and as such, it can be particularly nerve-shredding.

With the webinar in question, I waited a while for a question and was starting to prepare my quiet crowd response, when a single question popped up in the chat box:

How do you know you can trust a journal?

As with all the best questions, this floored me for a while. How do you know? The usual things flashed across my mind: reputation, whether it’s published known scholars in its field, whether it is indexed by Cabells or other databases, etc. But suddenly the word trust felt a lot more personal than simply a tick box exercise to confirm a journal’s standing. That may confirm it is trustworthy but is that the same as the feeling an individual has when they really trust something or someone?

The issue of trust is often the unsaid part of the global debates that are raging currently, whether it is responses to the coronavirus epidemic, climate change or democracy. Politicians, as always, want the people to trust them; but increasingly their actions seem to be making that trust harder and harder. As I write, the UK put its two top scientists in front of the cameras to give a grave warning about COVID-19 and a second wave of cases. The fact there was no senior politician to join them was highly symbolic.

It is with this background that the choice of the theme Trust in Peer Review is an appropriate one for Peer Review Week (full disclosure: I have recently joined one of the PRW committees to support the initiative). There is a huge groundswell of support by publishers, editors and academics to support both the effectiveness of peer review and the unsung heroes who do the job for little recognition or reward. The absence of which would have profound implications for research and society as a whole.

Which brings me to the answer to the question posed above, which is to ask the opposite: how do you know when you cannot trust a journal? This is easier to answer as you can point to all those characteristics and behaviours that you would want in a journal. We see on a daily basis with our work on Predatory Reports how the absence of crucial aspects of a journal’s workings can cause huge problems for authors. No listed editor, a fake editorial board, a borrowed ISSN, a hijacked journal identity, a made-up impact factor, and – above all – false promises of a robust peer review process. Trust in peer review may require some research on the part of the author in terms of checking the background of the journal, its publisher and its editors, and it may require you to contact the editor, editorial board members or published authors to get personal advice on publishing in that journal. But doing that work in the first place and receiving personal recommendations will build trust in peer review for any authors who have doubts – and collectively for all members of the academic community.

Simon Linacre Academia, Higher Education

Know before you go

Earlier this week, the Guardian in the UK released its updated university rankings, just the latest of myriad national and international exercises in defining the “best” university. At a time when deciding to go to university is fraught with unkowns, Simon Linacre argues that critical thinking skills are more important than ever.

I’ll admit it, I love it when my own university tops any kind of ranking. The fact that I was there 25 years ago and the subjects and academics taught there are unrecognisable, is of no consequence. That the department I graduated from is the BEST in the country is something I have to tell my wife and colleagues about, despite the arched eyebrows and disdain I can feel from several thousand miles away.

What does this mean? Well, aside from the fact that I must be a walking target for alumni fundraisers, it shows that my critical faculties, if not entirely absent, are certainly being overridden by shameless pride in something I have no right to be proud about. But like your favourite football team, you can’t help pulling for them through thick and thin – when they suck you say “we’re awful!”, and when they do well you say “we’re top!”.

Who’s “we”?

However, deciding which university to go to in a year or two is not the same as choosing a football team to support. You should use every critical faculty you have and hone it until it is razor-sharp before you even think of filling in a form or visiting a campus. And that means you should learn to read a university ranking like you would read a balance sheet before investing in a company, or reviewing a journal before submitting an article. I do not believe there is anything inherently wrong in any ranking as it can provide extremely useful data on which to base a decision. But you need to know where the data came from and how it relates to the investment you are making in your future life and career. This is why we always recommend users of Cabells’ Journalytics database use other relevant data points for their individual circumstances.

This week, the Guardian published its UK university rankings for 2021, with Oxford, St Andrews and Cambridge leading the way overall (full disclosure: I attended St Andrews). Each broad subject is then broken down into separate rankings with the promise that, “unlike other league tables, the Guardian rankings are designed with students in mind.” What, other university rankings do NOT have students in mind? Straight away, the amount of spin adopted here should tell you that (a) you should be careful of other hyperbolae, and (b) you should look at other league tables to see why the Guardian would say this.

And there are plenty of tables to choose from – both nationally and internationally there are dozens of such rankings, all seeking to advise students on which university to choose. Why? Because of the 48 pages of the university guide, six are adverts. Organisations publish rankings guides to sell advertising and cement their reputation as education experts, further enhancing their opportunities to sell education-related advertising in the future. Knowing why there is spin and why these guides exist in the first place should help students understand what information is in front of them and ensure a better decision-making process.

But students should also dig deep into the data. In the “Business, management and marketing” subject ranking, readers are told that, “most universities will boast of having good links with business,” that “group work is a key part of many courses” and “there will also be a practical element to assessment.” But none of these points are addressed in the rankings, which include data on criteria such as course and teaching satisfaction, spend per student and “career after 15 months.” All of this information is relevant but only some has data to back it up.

Sitting with my 12-year-old at breakfast, he looked at the page on architecture (which he has wanted to do since the age of about seven), and decided he should go to Cambridge, UCL or Bath as the top three for that subject. None of those would be a bad choice, but neither would they be an informed one.

Simon Linacre Academic Publishing, Predatory publishing, Scholarly Communication

Special report: Assessing journal quality and legitimacy

Earlier this year Cabells engaged CIBER Research (http://ciber-research.eu/) to support its product and marketing development work. Today, in collaboration with CIBER, Simon Linacre looks at the findings and implications for scholarly communications globally.

In recent months the UK-based publishing research body CIBER has been working with Cabells to better understand the academic publishing environment both specifically in terms of Medical research publications, and more broadly with regard to the continuing problems posed by predatory journals. While the research was commissioned privately by Cabells, it was always with the understanding that much of the findings could be shared openly to enable a better understanding of these two key areas.

The report — Assessing Journal Quality and Legitimacy: An Investigation into the Experience and Views of Researchers and Intermediaries – with special reference to the Health Sector and Predatory Publishing — has been shared today on CIBER’s website and the following briefly summarizes the key findings following six months’ worth of research:

  • The team at CIBER Research was asked to investigate how researchers in the health domain went about selecting journals to publish their papers, what tools they used to help them, and what their perceptions of new scholarly communications trends were, especially in regard to predatory journals. Through a mixture of questionnaire surveys and qualitative interviews with over 500 researchers and ‘intermediaries’ (i.e. librarians and research managers), research pointed to a high degree of self-sufficiency among researchers regarding journal selection
  • While researchers tended to use tools such as information databases to aid their decision-making, intermediaries focused on sharing their own experiences and providing education and training solutions to researchers. Overall, it was notable how much of a mismatch there was between what researchers said and what intermediaries did or believed
  • The existence of so-called ‘whitelists’ were common on a national and institutional level, as were the emergence of ‘greylists’ of journals to be wary of, however, there seemed to be no list of recommended journals in Medical research areas
  • In China, alongside its huge growth in research and publication output are concerns that predatory publishing could have an impact, with one participant stating that, “More attention is being paid to the potential for predatory publishing and this includes the emergence of Blacklists and Whitelists, which are government-sponsored. However, there is not just one there are many 10 or 20 or 50 different (white)lists in place”
  • In India, the explosion of predatory publishing is perhaps the consequence of educational and research expansion and the absence of infrastructure capacity to deal with it. An additional factor could be a lack of significant impetus at a local level to establish new journals, unlike in countries such as Brazil, however, universities are not legally able to establish new titles themselves. As a result, an immature market has attempted to develop new journals to satisfy scholars’ needs which in turn has led to the rise of predatory publishing in the country
  • Predatory publishing practices seemed to be having an increased impact on mainstream publishing activities globally, with grave risk of “potentially polluting repositories and citation indexes but there seems to have been little follow through by anyone.” National bodies, publishers and funders have failed to follow through on the threat and how it may have diverted funds away from legitimate publications to those engaged in illicit activities
  • Overall, predatory publishing is being driven by publish-or-perish scenarios, particularly with early career researchers (ECRs) where authors are unaware of predatory publishers in general, or of the identity of a specific journal. However, a cynical manipulation of such journals as outlets for publications is also suspected.

 

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‘Why do you think researchers publish in predatory journals’

 

CIBER Research is an independent group of senior academic researchers from around the world, who specialize in scholarly communications and publish widely on the topic. Their most recent projects have included studies of early career researchers, digital libraries, academic reputation and trustworthiness.