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Predatory publications in Scopus: evidence on cross-country differences
Macháček, Vít ; Srholec, Martin
The paper maps the infiltration of so-called “predatory” scholarly journals into the citation database Scopus. Using the names of “potential, possible, or probable” predatory journals and publishers on Beall’s lists, we derived ISSNs of the respective journals from Ulrichsweb and searched Scopus with it. A total of 324 matched journals with 164 thousand documents indexed in Scopus over 2015-2017, making up a share of 2.8 % of the total articles have been identified. An analysis of cross-country differences in the tendency to publish in these journals reveals that overall the most affected are middle-income countries in Asia and North Africa. Kazakhstan is the country with the largest tendency to publish in predatory journals (18 %). More than 5 % is reported in 20 countries, including large countries such as Indonesia (18 %), Malaysia (11 %), India (10 %), or Nigeria (7 %). Neither developed countries are resistant to predatory publishing. More than 16 000 “potentially predatory” articles were published by authors from United States (0.67 %).
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Inside Beall’s lists
Macháček, Vít ; Srholec, Martin
The analysis confirms that the vast majority of journals implicated on Beall’s lists are scholarly marginal and often quite weird, which gives credibility to the suspicion that they are using non-standard editorial practices. Academics, who are concerned about their professional reputation, should better stay away from them. However, there are also enlisted journals that may not be predatory in the true sense. In particular, the list of publishers contains two important entries, namely Frontiers and Impact Journals, the accusation of which being predatory appears to be questionable. Relatively high citation impact scores coupled with large shares of authors from advanced countries in journals under these publishing houses vindicates the controversy. Jeffrey Beall in these verdicts challenges opinion of hundreds if not thousands researchers worldwide, who apparently read and quite frequently cite results reported in these journals.
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Predatory journals in Scopus
Macháček, Vít ; Srholec, Martin
The study maps the penetration of so-called “predatory” scholarly journals into the citation database Scopus. Predatory journals exploit the author pays open access model, and conduct only cursory or no peer review, despite claims to the contrary. Some such journals will publish almost anything for money. In the Czech context whether a journal is indexed in Scopus is crucial for determining the points that publications in that journal are awarded in the national performance-based evaluation of research organizations, which in turn is the basis for the allocation of institutional funding. Hence, in this evaluation framework, publishing in predatory journals that are indexed in Scopus has a clear “fiscal” advantage.
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