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 category of predatory (or questionable) journals. We present that when we analyze papers not only in terms of the number of their citations but also the content of these citations, we are able to show the much more complicated role of papers published in journals accused of being predatory. We analyzed the content of 9,995 citances from 6,706 papers indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection, which cites papers published in so-called questionable journals. The analysis revealed that the vast majority of such citances are neutral (97.3%), and negative citations of articles from questionable 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, and mentions of Western countries are rare. This highlights geopolitical bias and shows the usefulness of looking at such journals as mislocated centers of scholarly communication. Apparently, the analyzed journals provide data needed in mainstream scholarly discussions, and the idea of predatory publishing hides geopolitical inequalities in global scholarly publishing. These findings also contribute to the further development of content-based citation analysis.