6. What’s Being Taught about Predatory Publishing? A Systematic Review of University Resources

Abstract

In Chapter 6, ‘Predatory Publishing in Institutional Research Ethics Curricula: Challenges and Opportunities,’ R. Glenn Cummins surveys the content of university-based curricula. For decades, federal funders in the US have required training or instruction in research ethics to address growing concerns about the responsible conduct of research. Universities have responded to this requirement in a variety of ways, including in-person workshops, classes, or training as well as through online modules. However, systematic review of university training has revealed that efforts to satisfy funder requirements (a) most often rely on modules provided by a sole outside provider (i.e., CITI), and (b) focus on topics such as authorship or plagiarism while ignoring the growing threat to the dissemination of scientific knowledge that is posed by predatory publishers. To identify gaps in extant institutional training on predatory publishing, it is crucial to establish what current resources are available to authors and are most commonly used within scholarly research environments. This chapter provides a comprehensive assessment of the publicly available training materials provided by US universities on the topic of predatory publishing. The chapter also documents the nature and content within training resources, the modality of training materials, and the intended audience for the identified resources.