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.

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.