Are papers published in predatory journals worthless? A geopolitical dimension revealed by content-based analysis of citations

Abstract

This study uses content-based citation analysis to move beyond the simplified classification of predatory journals. We present that, when we analyze papers not only in terms of the quantity of their citations but also the content of these citations, we are able to show the various roles played by papers published in journals accused of being predatory. To accomplish this, we analyzed the content of 9,995 citances (i.e., citation sentences) from 6,706 papers indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection, which cites papers published in so-called “predatory” (or questionable) journals. The analysis revealed that the vast majority of such citances are neutral (97.3%), and negative citations of articles published in the analyzed journals are almost completely nonexistent (0.8%). Moreover, the analysis revealed that the most frequently mentioned countries in the citances are India, Pakistan, and Iran, with mentions of Western countries being rare. This highlights a geopolitical bias and shows the usefulness of looking at such journals as mislocated centers of scholarly communication. The analyzed journals provide regional data prevalent for mainstream scholarly discussions, and the idea of predatory publishing hides geopolitical inequalities in global scholarly publishing. Our findings also contribute to the further development of content-based citation analysis. Peer Review https://publons.com/publon/10.1162/qss_a_00242

How Metric-Based Performance Evaluation Systems Fuel the Growth of Questionable Publications?

“…Average number of citations on Google Scholar of articles in the questionable journals Despite significant numerical differences between disciplines, articles published in questionable journals receive a substantial number of citations, which is a topic widely discussed in the literature. Various debates (Anderson, 2019;Björk et al, 2020;Frandsen, 2017;Taşkın et al, 2023) question whether citations accurately measure the quality of publications, and this study adds to the ongoing discourse. Notably, the data source used in this study is Google Scholar, which covers a wide range of content, yet these articles labeled as questionable continue to receive considerable citations.…”

“…This choice is grounded in our acknowledgment that detecting and conceptualizing predatory activities is highly challenging and can be influenced by perspectives from both central and peripheral countries . Additionally, considering that most researchers publishing in questionable journals are inexperienced researchers from developing countries (Xia et al, 2015), and recognizing the role of questionable journals in disseminating research outputs from emerging research systems in peripheral countries (Mills & Inouye, 2021;Taşkın et al, 2023), we believe it is essential to highlight the research evaluation systems that give rise to questionable practices rather than solely focusing on the products of these systems.…”

Research trend of Arabic language teaching in the world: Systematic literature review based on Scopus database

“…First, research interest in this field is still low (Doyle et al, 2020;Ross & Bibler Zaidi, 2019;Snyder, 2019;Vasileiou et al, 2018). Second, the quality of research and articles is still low so it does not meet the standards of internationally reputable journals (Fanelli & Larivière, 2016;Taşkın et al, 2023;Wager & Kleinert, 2013). Third, there are still few journals whose focus and scope include Arabic language learning (Kraus et al, 2020;Noble, 2017;Van Dijk et al, 2014).…”