An Ottawa expert in predatory journals — websites that publish low-quality science research for money — says it would be enormously difficult to use legal action to stop them — if, in fact, they’re breaking the law at all.
But there may be other, better ways to deal with the predators, said David Moher of the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute.
“In order to shut them down you would have to bring a case against them. You would need to have lawyers,” he said. “That’s quite an expensive proposition,” and the fact that online journals operate across national boundaries complicates it.
The problem came to light again this week with news that a former Canadian medical journal called Experimental & Clinical Cardiology has new owners who will print anything for $1,200. This includes a nonsense manuscript submitted by the Citizen.
Predatory journals cheat researchers who can’t get published through reputable channels, by accepting their work and trying to make it look like real science publishing, for a price.
The authors don’t get any real credit for this work once the journal is recognized as a fake. But in the Third World especially it remains a problem, in places where governments and universities are often less alert to the practice. And this can allow unqualified scientists, doctors and engineers to build careers. The practice also floods the Internet with low-quality work, muddying the waters for those doing new research.
Universities need to study this issue seriously, Moher said.
That means that young academics need to take a hard look at online journals offering to publish their work, to make sure there’s an identifiable editor and editorial board, and the feel of a legitimate publication.
“Tread very, very cautiously,” he said.
“The academic institutions which are the central repository for the next generation of researchers need to get on board here. They need to try to promote the investigation of all this, the study of all this. They need to develop some form of guidance for all of their faculty and students about this.”
Moher argues it’s probably possible to bring some “predatory” publishers in line with moral codes accepted by other academic publishers.
“There is some movement out there to try to curtail what these journals are doing,” by COPE (the Committee on Publication Ethics) and the Directory of Open Access Journals, he said.
Meanwhile, predatory journals keep coming up with new scams and schemes:
• A new operator called Sprint Journals is in the process of launching 107 new online journals and advertises itself as part of the Elsevier science publishing empire. Elsevier is a legitimate publisher. In fact, there’s no connection between the two.
• Some are now faking “impact factors.” These are figures that show how often a journal’s contents are cited by other scientists in their research. Having a high impact factor means many scientists rely on a given journal as an authority. Predatory journals make up fake impact factors, by creating fake ratings agencies with names similar to the real ones.
• Experimental and Clinical Cardiology still advertises that it’s the official journal of a reputable cardiology society. It’s not.
• They recruit unqualified people to list as guest editors. This week, a journal that lists its address a “USA” but uses a bank in Hong Kong asked a Citizen reporter to be a guest editor. The assignment involves writing a quick mini-review (checking some boxes, no words required) of a paper on chicken blood.
Related
Respected medical journal turns to dark side
Tips for spotting predatory journals
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