It happens every day. A new email pops up in a researcher’s in-box from a journal with a seemingly familiar name and an invitation to publish a research paper, present at a meeting or, perhaps, serve on an editorial board.
Dr. Hannan
Like many of her colleagues, Marian Hannan, DSc, MPH, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and editor in chief of the ACR’s journal, Arthritis Care & Research, receives such email solicitations at least once per week and promptly sends them to her virtual trash bin.
Predatory publishing itself has become the subject of scholarly investigation. Earlier this year, a well-known study, published in Nature and discussed in other publications including The New Yorker, invented a fake scientist who applied to serve on the editorial boards of 360 journals, including indexed journals with official impact factors, as well as journals suspected to be predatory. The researchers found that the journals deemed predatory were more likely to accept the fake scientist on their editorial boards.
Acknowledging the reality of predatory publishing is not a new trend. In 2005, a group of MIT students created a program, called SCIgen, to create “nonsensical computer-science papers with realistic-looking graphs, figures and citations” in response to their frustrations with predatory publishing practices. One notable fake article from the program was published, illustrating their point.1
So why, more than a decade after open discussions have emerged within academia about these predatory publishers, are they still out there?
One reason may be the pressure for researchers to get their work published, suggests Simon Helfgott, MD, a rheumatologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, director of education and fellowship training at Harvard Medical School, and physician editor of The Rheumatologist.
Dr. Helfgott
“There is pressure to publish at all costs, but if you are going to stray, there may be a price to pay,” Dr. Helfgott says. For example, researchers may be tempted to collaborate with one of these questionable publishers to get their work out there and get a publication to add to their CV. “The value of a scholarly journal depends on its reputation. When research is published in a journal with no impact factor or reputation within the community, the work is essentially lost, and it may not come to light until a scholar is seeking tenure or a new position and having their publications reviewed by colleagues.”
He says he receives multiple unsolicited messages from publications each week and admits it can be difficult to discern the good journals from the bad, because the less than desirable journals do everything they can to look respectable. For example, impact factor is one sign of a reputable journal; however, recently Dr. Helfgott received a solicitation from a journal that had created its own impact factor that looks official but is meaningless.
One important distinction that he believes must be made in this age of predatory publishers is recognizing the open-access journals with a good reputation that are respected among experts in a specific academic discipline. “The concept of open-access publication provides an important source for researchers to share their work.”
He encourages all rheumatology researchers to be more savvy when considering a journal to publish in. This can include investigating where the journal is located to check for a legitimate address on the journal’s web page and reviewing the editorial board for familiar names.
Dr. Solomon
It also pays to be wary of offers for financial payment for soliciting articles, suggests Daniel Solomon, MD, MPH, professor of medicine in rheumatology and Matthew H. Liang Distinguished Chair at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Like Drs. Hannan and Helfgott, Dr. Solomon receives multiple unsolicited offers each month to serve on publication editorial boards or share research for publication.
These requests are usually from journals that have names that sound very similar to well-established journals, but he says, “a scan through their published work does not show the level of rigorous review that journals with well-known reputations engage in.” He believes there is still a lack of awareness in the rheumatology community about the prevalence and risks associated with predatory publishers.
Learn from Others
When in doubt about the legitimacy of a journal solicitation, ask colleagues, Dr. Hannan advises. One of Dr. Hannan’s junior faculty members was deceived by a predatory solicitation to present a paper at a conference several years ago. After sending her paper and booking her flight and hotel reservations, she soon received a bill for $5,000 for publication fees, followed by a second bill for $6,000 for incidental fees. She promptly removed her paper and ceased dealing with the publisher, although she received numerous messages and bills requiring payment with late fees attached and threats the bills would go to a collections agency. Eventually, the messages and threats stopped.
Dr. Brasington
New faculty members are not the only victims of predatory publishers. Richard Brasington, MD, rheumatologist and fellowship program director at Washington University in St. Louis and associate editor for The Rheumatologist says he was duped by a journal asking him to edit a special issue in his area of research.
After reaching out to a group of colleagues and working closely together over a series of months to finalize a collection of articles, they submitted the work, but received no word on any peer review or editing. Following multiple unanswered emails, Dr. Brasington investigated the publisher more extensively and discovered it had a “horrible reputation as an unscrupulous money maker rather than being a legitimate academic entity.”
Eventually, he and the other authors received requests from the publisher for payment to receive copies of their articles, which they ignored.
“I was trying to do a service by curating this journal issue on an important focus around interstitial lung disease, and it was a great combination of research, but I think it has disappeared,” he admits. “To be honest, I was incredibly naive, and this was very embarrassing. I recruited super experts in the field; unfortunately, they didn’t know any better than I did.”
Established publications from professional societies are fighting predatory publishers. The ACR’s peer-reviewed journal, Arthritis & Rheumatology (A&R), has been in a trade infringement dispute with a publisher whose name is extremely similar to the ACR’s publication title and is sending out solicitations to rheumatologists who have mistakenly believed they were being contacted by A&R, according to Nora Singer, MD, a rheumatologist in Cleveland, Ohio and chair of the ACR’s Committee on Journal Publications.
“These journals are trying to take advantage of the College and other established and well-known institutions to imply that their journal is sponsored by that professional society—and it’s to this that we object,” Dr. Singer explains. “Nobody is saying publishers shouldn’t have the right to seek out new research to publish, but they shouldn’t launch their product off the back of a society that has put in years of hard work to establish a strong reputation.”
There is concern among Dr. Singer and her colleagues on the ACR committee that with so much research being produced, there is no way to publish everything. If a researcher has their work rejected by an established journal, they may be lured in by a journal with a less than stellar reputation to get their work out there and not realize it’s really a predatory publication with a pay-to-publish scheme.
She suggests authors interested in publishing through a reputable online open-access site explore Wiley Open Access journals. These fully open-access journals are supported by internationally known editorial board members and are published in collaboration with authoritative journals and societies.
For those interested in submitting to an ACR publication, Dr. Singer advises authors to contact the ACR’s journals (A&R and AC&R). If a submission website or an email that appears to be from the College doesn’t look right, “Reach out to make sure you are submitting to the right place,” she recommends. Doing so can prevent a miscommunication to a sound-alike journal website. All ACR publications are published through John Wiley & Sons Inc.; therefore, all journal submissions go through Wiley’s Manuscript Central website for submission.
‘Our focus should be on the content & the body of the work, & our measure of publishing success should be the advancement of scientific discourse that serves our patients & advances our field of study.’ —Dr. Bucala
Know the Difference
style-photography / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
More universities are taking time to raise awareness about what is reputable and what is a scam when it comes to seeking a source for publishing research. In Dr. Hannan’s department at Harvard, new faculty are trained twice per year to be aware of the dangers of predatory publishers and to learn best approaches for a strategic approach to publish research in a reputable source. “This training includes an established approach between junior and senior authors to collaborate on choosing two journals to submit to so there is a back-up plan if the first journal rejects the article,” Dr. Hannan shares. She says this input from senior authors can provide constructive experience and understanding on the publishing process.
Similar discussions on strategic approaches to getting published and avoiding predatory publishers are happening at other academic institutions and this is valuable, according to Richard Bucala, MD, PhD, professor of medicine, pathology, and epidemiology at Yale University and editor in chief of A&R.
“Online publishing offers many advantages in terms of speed, cost and reaching people, but I think we have to be careful because the process of peer review and careful editing to refine a research paper are all key steps in validating published research and building the strong reputation of a publication,” Dr. Bucala says. “None of that really occurs in predatory journals.”
Dr. Bucala
Dr. Bucala is concerned that this preponderance of predatory journals seeking financial gain rather than contributing to scientific advancement can negatively affect the public’s perception of academia and, even more concerning, can negatively affect the scientific process involved in preparing a research study for publication.
“A quality product takes time on the part of authors, reviewers, editors and peer reviewers,” he says. “These are critical steps in the dissemination of a paper, because it is done in a blinded fashion and a relatively unbiased way to provide important feedback to the author so the manuscript can be refined and improved.”
The competition can be tough to get published in a preeminent journal, such as A&R, with a strong reputation and history, noting that less than 14% of papers that are submitted are accepted. Rejection can be for many different reasons, not only the merit of the work, but also if the research is too specialized and would be a better fit for a different publication, Dr. Bucala explains.
The bottom line is that “you can’t get a quality product by taking shortcuts,” such as those taken by predatory journals, which he labels a distraction.
“This distraction is our reality,” but we can choose to ignore unsolicited messages or the promise of getting published and protect our work from being wasted in these predatory publications, Dr. Bucala stresses. “Our focus should be on the content and the body of the work, and our measure of publishing success should be the advancement of scientific discourse that serves our patients and advances our field of study. This is not a simple task, but it is a fundamental one.”
Carina Stanton is a freelance science journalist based in Denver.
Reference
- Conner-Simons A. How three MIT students fooled the world of scientific journals. MIT News. 2015 Apr 14.
