Pitfalls of Predatory Journals - SAGE Journals

Original Article Comprehensive Psychology Volume 5: 1–5 ! The Author(s) 2016 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/2165222816631691 cop.sagepub.com

Pitfalls of Predatory Journals: A Personal Account Armando Simoń

Abstract An unexpected, relatively unknown, pitfall of electronic journals is the proliferation of “fake journals,” fake in so far as there are no editorial boards nor peer reviews of submitted manuscripts. The author’s investigation and personal experience with one such journal is described. Although most of the submissions to that journal have been from Third World scholars taking advantage of the low fees, it is only a matter of time before unsuspecting scholars from Europe and North America become entangled in such journals. Keywords internet journals, fraud

Introduction The advent of online research journals has been of great benefit for many reasons. Contrary to editors’ opinions (Antonucci, 2015; Carr, 2015), there was always a surplus of good research studies and opinion articles that were often overlooked by the traditional journals for lack of space (or lack of interest) on the part of the particular editor, so that the competition for publication, particularly in high-prestige journals such as Science, Cell, Lancet, Nature, Ethology, and The Journal of the American Medical Association (to name just a few) was fierce. This was particularly grievous when some of the rejections by editors and reviewers were whimsical (to put it politely). With more venues available, many previously overlooked studies could find an outlet. The Open Access (OA) format (i.e., journals published online on the World Wide Web and accessible to anyone without payment) allows for a larger number of papers published of any length, the use of color throughout, including supplementary materials, in an accepted paper. Another positive benefit with some of the OA journals is the relatively faster turnaround for a decision as to whether a paper will be published or not in the particular journal, as well as a faster “publication” on the Internet.1 Equally important is the financial aspect (Curb & Abramson, 2012). Some of the publication costs of hardcopy journals to this day remain so absurdly high (even when a journal has substantial revenue from advertisers)

that they are prohibitive to researchers in Third World countries (although some journals have a sliding scale to help out). This lack of access and failure to publish leads occasionally to the disregard of Third World researchers (Meneghini, Packer, & Nassi-Calo, 2008), unless those researchers migrate to more affluent societies where affiliated institutions will shoulder the expense. With some notable exceptions—principally PLOS ONE with its exorbitant fees—many online publications are cheaper than traditional publications; this has resulted in a reduction of publication costs. Indeed, part of the motivation for the new research publication model was resentment at what some viewed as the exploitation of research scientists; not only were universities charged for journal subscriptions, but copies of mandatory reprints (individual copies of articles) were expensive for authors. In 2011, Elsevier, for example, made a profit of £768 million, a 37% profit, from its journalistic empire. What has particularly galled scientists was the fact that reviewers have been traditionally unpaid for their efforts (Anonymous (b), 2012). Some of these journals have already achieved an excellent reputation, the multidisciplinary PLOS ONE arguably being the foremost, thanks to a $10 million government grant (Wikipedia, 2015). In 2014, PLOS Corresponding Author: Armando Simoń. Email: [email protected]

Creative Commons Non Commercial CC-BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (http://www.uk.sagepub.com/aboutus/openaccess.htm).

2

Comprehensive Psychology

ONE published an astonishing 30,040 papers. Yet, there was an unforeseen element in this electronic scenario, one which I will illustrate from my own example. Simply put, whereas the existence of fraudulent scientific research has been given voluminous exposure, the same cannot be said of fraudulent journals.

A Personal Account Years ago, I wrote a paper highly critical of the Freudian dogma, wherein I called for the complete expurgation of this pseudoscience from the field of psychology and from textbooks, arguing that neither the fields of geology nor astronomy give any consideration to the either the flat earth concept or the geocentric system of the solar system (Simoń, 2010). Needless to say, this paper was not welcomed in American psychology and psychiatric journals, even though I was not the first to write a scathing analysis (e.g., Crews, 1998). Much later in 2013, foregoing print journals, I explored OA and submitted it to the British Journal of Arts and Social Sciences. I was delighted when it was accepted but puzzled at it taking a mere 3 days and with absolutely no comments or criticisms on a subject that had previously elicited such strong emotional reactions. Furthermore, I had omitted to number the references in the reference section as had been required in this particular journal, an oversight on my part, yet no corrections had been made. On the other hand, it had the benefit of charging relatively low publication costs (£200/US$300). On further inspection, several details added to my initial puzzlement, which subsequently became serious concerns. First, 99% of the papers in the journals were from Third World countries (e.g., Turkey, Botswana, Jordan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, with a particularly strong presence from Nigeria) even though the journal was supposedly based in the United Kingdom. Second, the journal had been in operation for the past 2 years, yet it was on its 8th volume, with two issues per volume; ordinarily, a journal volume is put out on a yearly basis even though it may contain several issues. Third, the methodology in most of the published works was rudimentary at best. Fourth, papers that had been published often deviated from the required format. Not only that but also the wording in some of the papers was faulty, and uncorrected by the editors, for example, Al-Oudat (2011): In the present Iraq-Kuwait conflict and Gulf war. Jordan supported Iraq. Jordan’s unequivocal backing for Iraq was the result of a special relationship that was first developed in the late 1970’s (1). For the last one decade this link made Jordan economically, politically, and militarily dependent on Iraq. In this Chapter, an

attempt has been made to discuss the Jordan’s role in the Gulf Crisis and reasons for its supporting Iraq in the Iraq-Kuwait war. (p.166)

Similarly, the title of another paper (Fatai, 2012) was as follows: “Democracy and national identities: the travails of national national security in Nigeria.” However, it was when the impressive looking editorial board was closely examined that things became alarming. Members of the editorial board were worldwide, from the University of Hong Kong, to the University of Ilorin, to the University of Amsterdam. I first attempted to contact the editorial board members in the American universities. Their names could not be found in the personnel files, except for two, both of whom denied any participation with the journal. Extending this investigation outside the United States led to the same result. In particular, the editor in chief, Jssica [sic] Sowaea from the University of Colorado Denver, did not exist. I withdrew the Freud paper, and it was not published. Furthermore, it turned out that another journal, entitled British Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, had an identical format, except that this journal had some contributors from the United States and Europe (e.g., Latvia, Spain, Italy). It also had almost the same editorial board as the first journal mentioned earlier, the difference being that one individual was mentioned twice in the masthead and that the editor in chief of this journal was one Nick James from the “University of Ohiao,” [sic] who also does not seem to exist. Another editor’s name was listed twice. Just as odd, a large proportion of the papers that were supposed to have been published in the journal (as evidenced in the volume’s table of contents) could not be accessed. Another published paper did not even have a title. As is usually the case, I thought that my situation was unique, but it would turn out not to be an isolated instance. Soon, thereafter, I was approached via e-mail to contribute to another journal, a website that boasted of having 150 journals in numerous disciplines. It was called Bentham Open. It was Chinese. The Open Psychology Journal claimed to be on its eighth volume, starting in 2008. Each “volume” had four or five articles, most of them of poor quality and with typographical errors. Subsequent to the above, I submitted a different paper to one of the Scientific Research Publishing (SCIRP) journals, the Open Journal of Medical Psychology (SCIRP has over 200 journals, publishing papers from different scientific fields). It was reviewed, some comments made, and I returned the manuscript, which was accepted for publication. Several requests from the editor asked for stylistic changes to be made. In addition, I requested a waiver of publication costs on the basis that

Simoń I was retired and was not associated with any institution that would provide the funds for the publication costs in any journal. A one-third reduction in payment was allowed. All of these were good signs, and the paper was published (Simoń, 2012).2 However, the corresponding editor’s English was slightly unusual, so I subsequently checked and found that the website was supposed to be based in the United States. However, payment for costs ultimately went to Kong Ruoshan in China. The website of Improbable Research (www.improbable.com) noted that another SCIRP OA journal, entitled Psychology, included as its first 2010 issue papers already published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (DeWall, Twenge, Gitter, & Baumeister, 2009; Dunning & Kruger, 1999), along with the notation: Copyrightß 2009 SciRes, without acknowledging their original source. The papers have since been retracted, and subsequent issues appear to have original work. Ironically, from the very beginning, the journal warned that “Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere.” Although supposedly based in the United States, the SCIRP website is registered in Wuhan, China. So why is this important? Because both plagiarism and fraudulent research are widely acknowledged to be rampant in China (Anonymous (a), 2010; Cyranoski, 2006; Ewing, 2010; Jie, 2012; Van Noorden, 2014; White, 2012). For example, there was a scandal inside China, reported briefly on the radio, that an agency that claimed to publish scientific journals—hardcopies—would only print a handful of issues sent to the author, while making the fraudulent claim that the journal was available in numerous universities (possibly the perpetrators may have morphed into the online open journal scam). Nor is China the only country where plagiarism and fraudulent scientific work is commonplace. From personal experience, I can testify to this being the case as well in Indonesia, another Asian country. However, in all fairness, it appears that SCIRP is using peer review in its journals. I randomly chose a number of papers that were published in those journals to see if they had been previously published elsewhere, and this unethical practice did not appear to have been repeated. A possibility exists that SCIRP was a startup enterprise and may have blundered in the above instance due to a particular individual’s action. On the other hand, the editors may have become more sophisticated if they were indeed conducting a scam. Time will tell as to its legitimacy. Time will also tell as to its scientific standards. As I stated earlier, when I first started, I initially thought that mine was a rare, isolated instance, but I later chanced across a website that serves as a warning

3 for fake journals in computer science (http://fakejournalss.wordpress.com/), which was illuminating. One Indian-based “journal” was tested by submitting a paper that was described by its own authors as an “absolutely stupid paper,” which was nonetheless accepted. Inspired by this experiment, I conducted a similar one with the British Journal of Arts and Social Sciences. I created a chimera paper, put together with paragraphs from several other papers whose topics included Freud, evolutionary psychology and Steve Jobs and submitted it to the “journal.” It made no sense in reading it. A few days later, an e-mail was received from the “editorial” offices, congratulating me because it had been accepted for publication (a more shocking example can be found in http://www.vox.com/2014/11/21/7259207/scientificpaper-scam).

Indeed Not an Isolated Instance The social sciences have not been the only target. There is website (http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/) that keeps a list of fraudulent journals targeting diverse disciplines (Butler, 2013) put together by Jeffrey Beall (Kolata, 2013) Although predatory journals have recently become a source of concern for some (FernandezLlimos, 2014; Lewis & Wulster-Radcliffe, 2014), it is Beall (2013a, 2013b) who, in particular, has been waging from the beginning a dedicated battle against these predatory journals. Others (e.g., Bartholomew (2014) are also spreading the word of this danger. In addition, the Directory of Open Access Journals is reviewing all OA journals for quality and legitimacy. It is obvious why the field of scholastic journals would attract criminal activity. The authors, or their institutions, pay the journals. The reviewers of submitted papers work for free. If hardcopies are produced, they are bought by universities at relatively high prices. Add to this mixture, the fact that every subspecialty of every field seeks legitimacy and status by having a journal focusing entirely on the subspecialty and that there are hundreds of subspecialties (Estes, 1990), and, with the use of the Internet there is less overhead. Whether fraudulent or legitimate, it is a potentially lucrative business. Statistical analyses (Xia et al., 2015) have verified that those who publish in predatory journals are, for the most part, young and inexperienced researchers from developing countries. Although most of the submissions in all of these journals have been from Third World scholars taking advantage of the low fees and the low standards for publication, it is only a matter of time before more unsuspecting scholars from Europe and North America become entangled in such journals. Obviously, the contributors to these journals bear absolutely no blame. One can only presume that they thought that they were dealing with a reputable, peer-reviewed professional journal

4 and were delighted that a journal would accept their paper on a topic that they felt was important but which would had no chance at all of it being considered in one of the standard journals from Europe and America. Indeed, some of the papers’ topics were, in fact, interesting. Their methodological rigor, however, ranged from the laughable to passable. The journals are fraudulent in so far as peer review and editing is concerned, but is there harm in their function? Granted that fraudulent research is harmful to everyone for the very obvious reasons (Anonymous (a) (c), 2011; Ioannidis, 2012; Sabbagh, 1999), does the same standard of opprobrium apply here? The publication costs are not as costly. The papers themselves, even if they were cleaned up grammatically, stylistically, and reexecuted with an improved methodology, would never find their way into the standard, respectable, journals: many of the papers’ topics would hold no interest whatsoever to Western editors, even though to the citizens of the particular Third World country may think them crucial. Our preoccupation with certain academic topics in Western society may be irrelevant, if not absurd, to the citizens of other countries. In fact, these journals are indeed very harmful for several reasons. The first reason is that the “journals” are nothing of the sort. There is no telling how long they will be in existence. The second is that they take money under false pretenses; they are a fraud and they are polluting the field of science. Lastly, the reputation of such “journals” has become so bad that an impression has formed in some persons that all OA journals are of lower quality than traditional journals (Knudson, 2014). Worse, along these same lines, contributors may actually harm their professional standing and that of their institutions (Gasparyan, Yessirkepov, Diyanova, & Kitas, 2015); at least one contributor lost his academic position as a result of publishing articles in predatory journals (Lukic´ et al., 2014). Simply put, a reputable scholar does not want to publish in a journal that prints trash.

Precautions So the question remains, how can a scientist avoid the pitfalls of predatory journals? The answer, appropriately enough, is to do research before submission. With wellknown traditional print journals, this is not necessary, unless they also offer OA versions of the same journals; at this point, the contributor should check to make sure that the web address of the OA version is indeed legitimate and tied to the original source to make sure that the journal title has not been hijacked by cybercriminals, which has, in fact, happened (Lukic´ et al., 2014). With lesser known journals, or brand new journals, it would be useful to verify if it was connected to an institution, such

Comprehensive Psychology as a professional organization or a publishing firm like Elsevier, Wiley, Sage, and so forth. Some of the telltale signs were elucidated earlier with the author’s personal experience: faulty English and aggressive, unsolicited, invitations to publish in a journal should be automatic red flags, as is a journal combining two different academic fields. Lastly, Lukic´ et al.’s (2014) list of fraudulent journals, as well as Beall’s list (780 fraudulent journals as of 2014; Beall, 2014) and blog (http://scholarlyoa.com) should be consulted (although Beall has been criticized for erroneously including legitimate journals that are independent of institutions). However, the Directory of Open Access Journals is the most thorough site and has a specific section for psychology. Unfortunately, as has been noted by others (Gasparyan et al., 2015), the attempts to bring down predatory journals have proven to be ineffective to date. In the meantime, I am still looking for an outlet for my Freud paper.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes 1. One of my research papers submitted to a traditional journal took a year and a half before it was even sent to a reviewer. The editor of another journal (Skeptic) sat on another paper for over 10 months. When I finally queried, some changes in the text were requested, but 5 days later, I was informed that another editor had just published an article on the very same topic on that same journal on the Internet and so my paper would not be accepted after all. 2. Since then, I have been inundated with recurrent requests to submit a paper for numerous journals, most of them not even in my field.

References Al-Oudat, A. (2011). Jordan and gulf crisis. British Journal of Arts and Social Sciences, 3(1), 165–178. Anonymous (b). (2010). Scientific fraud: Action needed in China. The Lancet, 375, 94. Anonymous (c). (2011). Mismeasure for mismeasure. Nature, 474, 419. Anonymous (a). (2012, July 21). Brought to book. The Economist, pp. 1–4. Retrieved from http://www.economist.com/node/21559317/print Antonucci, T. (2015). Rotten reviews. Observer, 28, 18.

Simoń Bartholomew, R. (2014). Science for sale: The rise of predatory journals. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 107, 384–385. Beall, J. (2013a). Medical publishing triage – Chronicling predatory open access publishers. Annals of Medicine and Surgery, 2, 47–49. Beall, J. (2013b). Five predatory mega-journals: A review. The Charleston Advisor, 14, 20–25. Beall, J. (2014). Unintended consequences: The rise of predatory publishers and the future of scholarly publishing. Editorial Office News, 2014, 4–6. Retrieved from www.ismte.org Butler, D. (2013). Investigating journals: The dark side of publishing. Nature, 495, 433–435. Carr, T. (2015). Rotten reviews redux. Observer, 28, 12. Crews, F. (1998). Unauthorized Freud. New York, NY: Penguin Books. Curb, L., & Abramson, C. (2012). An examination of authorpaid charges in science journals. Comprehensive Psychology, 1, Article 4. Cyranoski, D. (2006). Special report named and shamed. Nature, 441, 392–393. DeWall, C. N., Twenge, J. M., Gitter, S. A., & Baumeister, R. F. (2009). It’s the thought that counts: The role of hostile cognition in shaping aggressive responses to social exclusion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96, 45–59. Dunning, D., & Kruger, J. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 1121–1134. Estes, W. (1990). Journals, journals, journals. Psychological Science, 1(1), 1–3. Ewing, K. (2010, January 21). Betraying Confucius: Academic fraud in China. Asia Times Online. Retrieved from http:// www.atimes.com/atimes/China/LA21Ad01.html Fatai, A. (2012). Democracy and national identities: The travails of national security in Nigeria. British Journal of Arts and Social Sciences, 9, 126–140. Fernandez-Llimos, F. (2014). Open access, predatory publishing and peer-review. Pharmacy Practice, 12, 427–428. Gasparyan, A. Y., Yessirkepov, M., Diyanova, S., & Kitas, G. (2015). Publishing ethics and predatory practices: A dilemma for all stakeholders of science communication. Journal of Korean Medicine, 30, 1010–1016. Ioannidis, J. (2012). Why most published research findings are false. Retrieved from http://www/plosmedicine.org/article/ info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124

5 Jie, D. (2012). Science paper trade booms in China. Retrieved from http://www.scidev.net/en/news/science-paper-tradebooms-in-china-1.html Knudson, D. (2014). Characteristics of English-language traditional and open access kinesiology and sport journals. Medicina Sportiva, 18, 179–184. Kolata, G. (2013, April 7). Scientific articles accepted (personal checks, too). The New York Times. Retrieved from http:// www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/health/for-scientists-an-explodingworld-of-pseudo-academia.html?pagewanted¼all&_r¼0 Lewis, G., & Wulster-Radcliffe, M. (2014). Predators and impersonators: A new breed of journals. Animal Frontiers, 4, 46–47. Lukic´, T., Bles´ ic´, I., Basarin, B., Ivanovic´, L., Milos´ evic´, D., & Sakulski, D. (2014). Predatory and fake scientific journals/ publishers—A global outbreak with rising trend: A review. Geographica Pannonica, 18, 69–81. Meneghini, R., Packer, A., & Nassi-Calo, L. (2008). Articles by Latin American authors in prestigious journals have fewer citations. PLOS ONE, 3(11), e3804. Sabbagh, K. (1999). A rum affair. New York, NY: Da Capo Press. Simoń, A. (2010). The case for exorcising the ghost of Sigmund Freud from the field of psychology. Unpublished manuscript. Simoń, A. (2012). An instance of somatoform disorder. Open Journal of Medical Psychology, 2, 21–22. Van Noorden, R. (2014, February 24). Publishers withdraw more than 120 gibberish papers. Nature News. Retrieved from http://www.todroberts.com/USF/gibberish-sciencepapers.pdf White, J. (2012, November 14). Fraud fighter: ’Faked research is endemic in China’. New Scientist. Retrieved from http:// www.newscientist.com/article/mg21628910.300-fraudfighter-faked-research-is-endemic-in-china.html Wikipedia. (2015). PLOS ONE. Retrieved from https://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/PLOS_ONE#Development Xia, J., Harmon, J. L., Connolly, K. G., Donnelly, R. M., Anderson, M. R., & Howard, H. A. (2015). Who publishes in “predatory” journals? Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 66, 1406–1417.

Author Biography Armando Simoń is a retired forensic psychologist.