Simon Linacre Academic Publishing, Predatory publishing, Predatory Reports

Reversal of fortune

One of the most common questions Cabells is asked about its Predatory Reports database of journals is whether it has ever “changed its mind” about listing a journal. As Simon Linacre reports, it is less a question of changing the outcome of a decision, but more of a leopard changing its spots.

This week saw the annual release of Journal Impact Factors from Clarivate Analytics, and along with it the rather less august list of journals whose Impact Factors have been suppressed in Web of Science. This year there were 33 journals suspended, all of which for “anomalous citation patterns found in the 2019 citation data” which pertained to high levels of self-citation. Such a result is the worst nightmare for a publisher, as while they can be due to gaming citation levels, they can also sometimes reflect the niche nature of a subject area, or other anomalies about a journal.

Sometimes the decision can be changed, although it is often a year or two before the data can prove a journal has changed its ways. Similarly, Cabells offers a review process for every journal it lists in its Predatory Reports database, and when I arrived at the company in 2018, like many people one of the first things I asked was: has Cabells ever had a successful review to delist a journal?

Open for debate

The answer is yes, but the details of those cases are quite instructive as to why journals are included on the database in the first place, and perhaps more importantly whey they are not. Firstly, however, some context. It is three years since the Predatory Reports database was first launched, and in that time almost 13,500 journals have been included. Each journal has a link next to the violations on its report for anyone associated with that journal to view the policy and appeal the decision:

1a

This policy clearly states:

The Cabells Review Board will consider Predatory Journal appeals with a frequency of one appeal request per year, per journal. Publications in Predatory Reports, those with unacceptable practices, are encouraged to amend their procedures to comply with accepted industry standards.

Since 2017, there have been just 20 appeals against decisions to list journals in Predatory Reports (0.15% of all listed journals), and only three have been successful (0.02%). In the first case (Journal A), the journal’s peer review processes were checked and it was determined that some peer reviews were being completed, albeit very lightly. In addition, Cabells’ investigators found a previous example of dual publication. However, following the listing, the journal dealt with the problems and retracted the article it had published as it seemed the author had submitted two identical articles simultaneously. This in turn led to Cabells revising its evaluations so that particular violation does not penalize journals for something where an author was to blame.

In the second review (Journal B), Cabells evaluated the journal’s peer review process and found that it was also not completing full peer reviews and had a number of other issues. It displayed metrics in a misleading way, lacked editorial policies on its website and did not have a process for plagiarism screening. After its listing in PR, the journal’s publisher fixed the misleading elements on its website and demonstrated improvements to its editorial processes. In this second case, it was clear that the journal’s practices were misleading and deceptive, but they chose to change and improve their practices.”

Finally, a third journal (Journal C) has just had a successful appeal completed. In this case, there were several problems that the journal was able to correct by being more transparent on its website. It added or cleared up confusion about the necessary policies and made information about its author fees available. Cabells was also able to evaluate its peer review process after it submitted peer review notes on a few articles and it was evident the journal editor was managing a good quality peer review, hence it has now been removed from the Predatory Reports database (it should be noted that, as with the other two successful appeals, journals removed from Predatory Reports are not then automatically included in the Cabells Journalytics database).

Learning curve

Cabells’ takeaway from all of these successful reviews was they were indeed successful – they showed that the original identification was correct, and they enabled improvements that identified them as better, and certainly non-predatory, journals. They also fed into the continuing improvement Cabells seeks in refining its Predatory Reports criteria, with a further update due to be published later this summer.

There are also things to learn from unsuccessful reviews. In one case a publisher appealed a number of its journals that were included on Predatory Reports. However, their appeal only highlighted how bad the journals actually were. Indeed, an in-depth review of each journal not only uncovered new violations that were subsequently added to the journals, but also led to the addition of a brand new violation that is to be included in the upcoming revision of the Predatory Reports criteria.

Simon Linacre and Irfan Syed Academic Publishing, Predatory publishing

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.

Simon Linacre Academic Publishing, Predatory Reports

Five dos and don’ts for avoiding predatory journals

HAVE YOUR SAY

Publication ethics is at the core of everything that Cabells does, and it continually promotes all scholarly communication bodies which seek to uphold the highest standard of publishing practices. As such, we would like to express our support for Simon Linacre (Cabells’ Director of International Marketing and Development) in his candidacy to become a COPE Trustee. COPE plays an essential role in ensuring scholarly publishing maintains the highest standards, and if you are a COPE member is it important you use your vote to support the organization’s progress.

Simon has been with Cabells two years, and involved in academic publishing for almost 20 years. In that time he has gained wide experience of all aspects of journal publishing, and in particular Open Access issues which this role focuses on.

If you would like to vote in the election, please go to the COPE website, log in and cast your vote for your favored candidate.

Thanks, The Cabells Team

It is three years since Cabells first launched its database on predatory journals, and a good deal has happened in that time in the world of scholarly publishing. In his latest post, Simon Linacre reflects on these changes and offers some ‘dos and don’ts’ on the latest version of the database.

In June 2017 – which seems a lifetime ago now for all sorts of reasons – Cabells launched a new database that included details on over 4,000 predatory journals. It was the first time that a resource of that size had been made available to researchers who wanted to check the legitimacy or otherwise of journals they may be considering as a destination for their articles. In the intervening years, it is to be hoped many authors have been alerted to the dangers of publishing their research in such journals and benefited from worthwhile publishing experiences in good journals.

At the time, Cabells chose to name the database the ‘Blacklist’ as the most straightforward description of the intent of the database. As some may have seen, we brought forward the decision to change its name to ‘Predatory Reports’ last week in the first of a number of changes Cabells intends to introduce in 2020 and beyond.

5.5 x 8.5 – PR - front

The new name includes the word ‘Reports’ for an important reason. The database has been designed as more than a simple list of predatory, fake or questionable journals – it has also been put together so that researchers can use the information that has been collated on all 13,400 journals to inform their understanding of scholarly communications, and as a result, make better decisions about their research publications and career into the future. In this spirit, here are FIVE DOS AND DON’TS of how to use the Cabells Predatory Reports database:

  1. DO check all violations listed for each journal on Predatory Reports to fully understand what the journal is NOT doing properly, as this can to help identify predatory behavior in future
  2. DON’T trust a journal because it has an ISSN on its website – over 40% of journals listed on Predatory Reports include one, with many copied from legitimate journals or simply invented
  3. DO check the publisher’s name in the ‘Advanced Search’ option if a journal is not included on the database, as the same publisher could have created a new journal with the same predatory behaviors
  4. DON’T visit a predatory journal website unnecessarily as they could contain malware – hover the cursor over the website to view the full URL to see if it corresponds to that of the journal being checked out
  5. DO send Cabells updates or information on potential new predatory journals by sending an email to ‘journals@cabells.com’

And as a final ‘DO’, do click the link to our 70+ criteria that we use to identify predatory journals – these will be updated soon to streamline and clarify the process of reviewing journals for inclusion in Predatory Reports, and offer a much more robust checklist than currently exists to help researchers avoid falling into the predatory journal trap.

Mike Bisaccio Cabells News

Announcement regarding brand-wide language changes, effective immediately

Since late last year, Cabells has been working on developing new branding for our products that better embody our ideals of integrity and equality in academic publishing and society as a whole. We set out to ensure that the changes represent a total departure from the symbolism inextricably tied to the idea of blacklists and whitelists. In support of, and in solidarity with, the fight against systemic racism that our country is facing, Cabells is implementing brand-wide language changes, effective immediately. The changes implemented today represent only a fraction of those that we will be launching in 2020, but it is an important start.

Users may experience temporary outages as the changes roll out, but normal operations should resume quickly. Customer access will function identically as before the changes, but look for the term “Journalytics” in place of “whitelist” and “Predatory Reports” in place of “blacklist.”

Please contact Mike Bisaccio at michael.bisaccio@cabells.com or (409) 767-8506 with any questions or for additional information.

Cabells thanks the entire community for their support of this effort.

Sincerely,
The Cabells Team