All's not what it seems

Predatory publishers

It's a topic that arises here, on occasion. But, for anyone unfamiliar with the subject, and not to overdo the explanation, what is predatory publishing?

In the beginning: the paper chase

Throughout the last century, academic research was largely published, in books and journals, by established publishing houses. Authors could submit an account of their research to a journal, the manuscript would be reviewed by peers working in that field and, if found satisfactory, published. No fees were exchanged. The authors were able to disseminate their work and gain the recognition of their peers. For their part, the publishers made money from the sale of the books and journals, usually to academic institutions and libraries.

One reason that the publishing houses were able to sell their publications was because of the perceived quality of the work therein. The peer-review process ensured academic rigour, and that made the work commercially valuable. It was therefore in the publishers' best interests to maintain high standards. These were indicated by, not infallible but broadly useful, impact factors. The more prestigious the journal, the higher the impact factor. The higher the impact factor, the more difficult to get work accepted, and the more it was valued by the wider academic community.

Electronica: get ready to get scalped

The advent of the internet and Adobe's portable document file format made it easier to publish to a global audience. No more need for printing presses and distribution networks. And thus was born open-access (OA) publishing. Whereas traditional journals have to be purchased, offering a barrier to entry for researchers with limited budgets and no institutional access to traditional publication outlets, OA publications are FREE to read!! Great news, eh? (thumbup)

But, although shitting out PDF files onto the internet is cheaper than running a printing press, it's not a no-cost option. There are still overheads to meet, and money needs to be made. Indeed, this is the predators' primary goal. Instead of accepting submissions and distributing them for a fee, as in the traditional model, the OA model turns things around: distribute cost-free, but charge the authors to publish their work.

A substantial flaw in this model becomes immediately apparent: quality control. The academic integrity of the work being published, that is.

The traditional publishing houses promoted quality through more-or-less rigorous peer-review, so as to maintain the desirability of their offerings. This doesn't apply to OA publishers. Quite the opposite, in fact. Their incentive is to publish more works, so as to increase revenue, and the barrier to entry is commensurately low: quantity over quality. They offer an outlet for authors whose work wouldn't be accepted by reputable journals and, in so doing, debase humankind's knowledge base.

Accordingly, although they may claim to offer peer-review, in some cases the stated turnaround time is so fast, a couple of days isn't uncommon, that I cannot believe it's rigorous; nothing more than window dressing, if it exists at all. And the article processing charges sometimes border on extortion: I can buy single articles from reputable, traditional publishers for $20–$50, but have seen OA acceptance fees up to 100-fold higher.

Many of these skeevy OA publishers claim to be based, in whole or in part, in the US, UK, or the like. In many cases, they are actually based in India. And, whereas quality journals can rely on authors finding them by reputation, the gutter journals use boilerplate bulk email templates to spam harvested address lists.

This is not to say that all OA journals are disreputable. PLOS One, for example, published by the Public Library of Science, seems to be of high quality. There are others, often funded by professional societies or non-profit organisations with a focus on their scope of interest. OA predators, in contrast, fling the net far and wide.

Remember, reputable publishers don't, or rarely, solicit for submissions; that's not how their revenue model works. So, if an editor approaches eminent Prof. you; extolling your work and its importance to the journal, especially if the field is irrelevant; emphasising urgency; and using a poor standard of English, you might want to give it a hard pass.

A game of two halves

While it's easy to see the predatory publishing houses as preying on the guileless, there is a flip-side to the coin.

As research funding becomes more dependent on publication success, some academics—and others—will look for lower barriers to entry. In this way, they can meet funding requirements for publishing their research findings, and at the same time pad their CV/resumé, even if the quality or importance of their work might not stand up to the rigours of thorough scientific peer review and may reflect poorly on their list of citations.

Thus, both publisher and published collude in despoiling the academic record for profit.

Predatory publishers encountered herein

This is not an exhaustive list of predators, just the ones that I've encountered to date, and noted on this blog.

Further reading