Simon Linacre assesses the state of predatory publishing, 15 years since the term was first coined

As someone who worked in academic publishing throughout the 2010s, one remembers that the term ’predatory publishing’ was often accompanied by a round of sniggers and smirks, as if those responsible for these fake journals were like the naughty boys at the back of the class, eliciting snorts of laughter for their outlandish behaviour. In the early days of industry awareness of the issue, there was a feeling that while it was a problem to take seriously, it wasn’t really a serious problem.

However, as our understanding grew and some academics published studies on the phenomenon, it felt like the issue began to gain more credence as something to be concerned about. Landmark studies such as Shen and Bjork (https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-015-0469-2) and predatory publishing godfather Jeffrey Beall’s own work with his increasingly famous lists, raised awareness that not only were things being published that shouldn’t on a large scale, but that in some cases research funding was facilitating it.

The height of awareness probably came at the end of the decade when Grudniewicz et al (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03759-y) provided a now well cited, well adopted definition of what predatory publishing actually meant, and the US Federal Trade Commission found OMICS International had effectively defrauded authors paying APCs to its journals over a six year period to the tune of over $50m (https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/cases-proceedings/152-3113-omics-group-inc). Now many more academics were both aware of what predatory journals were, and that it was a lucrative business to dupe authors into publishing their research in them.

To read the full article on researchinformation.info, click here