There is an assumption held by many that predatory journals are a problem that only affects other people. A bit like a tropical disease or rare syndrome, it is something that is known to afflict others, but not you, your family, or your friends and colleagues. In the case of predatory publishing practices, this might be something we think only happens to other researchers outside the US or Europe.
This line of thinking is, of course, pure hokum. Many research studies have shown that not only is predatory publishing widespread in the US and Europe in terms of publications by authors based there, but we know from our experiences at Cabells that authors from those regions are specifically targeted due to their enhanced ability to pay APCs when compared to researchers based elsewhere in the world.
Worrying trend
Therefore, it is concerning to read an article published last week showing awareness of predatory journal activities among US faculty members. The study, authored by Webber, et al (2025) from a number of US universities, looked at US faculty members’ knowledge of predatory journals in terms of four specific aspects, namely their academic disciplines, years employed in research, number of articles published, and whether they were early career scholars.
The findings showed that while the number of articles a researcher had published was the best indicator of their knowledge of predatory publishing practices, the length of time they had been an academic was not a strong indicator for this level of knowledge. Indeed, neither was the subject in which they were experts, implying that experience of actually publishing articles offered the best education in the nefarious ways of predatory journals.
As such, the study’s authors conclude that “the number of recent articles published by a faculty member is a more reliable indicator of knowledge about predatory publishing than the other measures of experience investigated.”
Key implications
One of the most common takes on not just the problem of predatory journals, but wider issues regarding research and publishing integrity, is that universities, governments, funders, publishers and the scholarly communication community as a whole should spend more time and resources simply educating faculty members on how to do their research and publish it in the right way. However, one would assume that research ethics are a crucial component in any US university’s PhD program. Gaining experience through publishing is all well and good, but if a researcher publishes in a predatory journal before gaining this knowledge, it is too late – a fact acknowledged by the authors.
The authors do end their study by saying it should inform graduate and faculty training, and perhaps what training does exist should be studied as to why it is not being as effective as it could be in improving faculty knowledge of integrity issues, such as predatory journals. Additionally, if gaining experience is the key factor in improving behaviors, one idea – which has been put forward by others previously – might be to create graduate journals where students can publish and peer review each other’s papers openly to develop their publishing skills as a form of training. There might be a market in reading those journals per se, but they might help to develop a much stronger, more knowledgeable cohort of academics for the future.
