According to some research, India has the unfortunate distinction of having both the highest number of predatory journals based there, and the highest number of authors publishing in them. In this week’s blog, Simon Linacre answers some of the questions researchers in that country have regarding authentic publishing practices.
During the latter part of 2020, instead of jetting off to typical destinations in the scholarly communications calendar such as Frankfurt and Charleston, some of my energies have been focused on delivering a number of short webinars on predatory publishing to a variety of Indian institutions. According to an oft-quoted article by Shen and Bjork in 2015, India has the largest number of authors who have published in predatory journals, and Cabells knows from its own data that one of the most common countries to find predatory journals originating is in India.
There are probably a number of reasons that account for this, but rather than speculate it is perhaps better to try to act and support Indian authors who do not want to fall into the numerous traps laid for them. One aspect of this are the recent activities of the University Grants Commission (UGC) and its Consortium for Academic and Research Ethics (CARE), which have produced a list of recommended journals for Indian scholars to use.
However, many in India are still getting caught out as some journals have been cloned or hijacked, while others use the predatory journal tactic of simply lying about their listing by UGC-CARE, Scopus, Web of Science or Cabells in order to attract authorship. Following one webinar last week to an Indian National Institute of Technology (NIT), there was a flurry of questions from participants that deserved more time than allowed, so I thought it would be worth sharing some of these questions and my answers here so others can hopefully pick up a few tips when they are making that crucial decision to publish their research.
- What’s the difference between an Impact Factor and CiteScore? Well, they both look and feel the same, but the Impact Factor (IF) records a journal’s published articles over a two year period and how they have been cited in the following year in other Web of Science-indexed journals, whereas the CiteScore records a journal’s published documents over a three year period before counting citations the following year.
- How do I know if an Impact Factor is fake? Until recently, this was tricky, but now Clarivate Analytics has made its IFs for the journals it indexes for the previous year available on its Master Journal List.
- If I publish an article in a predatory journal, can the paper be removed? A submission can be made to the publisher for an article to be retracted, however a predatory publisher is very unlikely to accede to the request and will probably just ignore it. If they do respond, they have been known to ask for more money – in addition to the APC that has already been paid – to carry out the request, effectively blackmailing the author.
- If I publish an article in a predatory journal, can I republish it elsewhere? Sadly, dual publication is a breach of publication ethics whether the original article is published in a predatory journal or a legitimate one. The best course of action is to build on the original article with further research so that it is substantially different from the original and publish the subsequent paper in a legitimate journal.
- How can I tell if a journal is from India or not? If the origin of the journal is important, the information should be available on the journal’s website. It can also be checked using other sources, such as Scimago which provides country-specific data on journals.
Simon Linacre, Cabells