Croatian scientists’ awareness of predatory journals

Abstract

So-called predatory journals threaten to diminish the quality of papers and of scientific research. This paper defines what constitutes a predatory journal, and provides a short literature overview. The aim of the research is to explore researchers' and librarians' awareness of predatory journals, using the example of Croatia, an EU country. Several institutions control the quality of Croatian scientific journals, so there are no predatory journals in Croatia. However, Croatian scientists publish their papers in foreign journals and thus have to be aware of all the threats of predatory journals. An online questionnaire was sent to researchers and librarians in order to find out if they understand what predatory journals are, if the researchers publish in those journals, and if the librarians educate their users about those journals. Results show that almost 90% of researchers are not sure what constitutes a predatory journal. Almost 50% of librarians are familiar with the term, but only less than 10% of librarians provide education on the topic. Raising awareness about predatory journals among scientists could prevent negative consequences such as the loss of scientific integrity and the risk of minimizing the visibility of research results. Libraries should play an important role in providing user education.

Development and validation of an instrument to assess the knowledge and perceptions of predatory journals

“…Meanwhile, the knowledge construct showed moderate reliability as measured by test-retest reliability. The quantitative results obtained from this study were congruent with several previous findings [ 14 , 18 , 19 , 22 , 23 , [51] , [52] , [53] , [54] , [55] , [56] ]. For example, Beshyah et al indicated that less than one-third of physicians were fully aware of predatory publishing while about two-thirds of them did not know Beall's list showing that participants had low awareness of predatory journals as well as they showed that participants had varied attitudes and practices among them [54).…”

“…This step resulted in the identification of some papers that had studied the knowledge and perceptions related to predatory journals [ 3 , 14 , 18 , 19 , 23 , [51] , [52] , [53] , [54] , [55] , [56] ]. However, most previous studies used self-administered questionnaires and varied widely in terms of questionnaire type.…”

“…2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree; if it was a negative statement, 1 = strongly agree, 2 = agree, 3 = neutral, 4 = disagree, 5 = strongly disagree). The items underlying this latent construct were generated utilizing various previously published related papers [ 14 , 18 , 23 , [51] , [52] , [53] , 56 ].…”

Publishing in predatory language and linguistics journals: Authors’ experiences and motivations

“…Although 16 out of the 21 participants in the qualitative phase of our study reported that they had heard about predatory journals and had some familiarity with such journals, they still published in the PPJs and did not view them as predatory. These apparent discrepancies indicate that having heard of predatory journals and knowing some of their features do not necessarily mean that authors can identify them in practice (Grgic & Guskic, 2019). Our findings contrast those of Atiso et al (2019) that Ghanaian scientists in the disciplines of animal, food, forestry and water research were aware of the differences between predatory and legitimate journals but published in them because of fast and easy publication.…”

How social are open-access debates: a follow-up study of tweeters' sentiments

“…The other serious factor is predatory publishing. Although researchers rarely welcome invitations from predatory journals (Nobes and Harris, 2019), they generally fail to distinguish the journals (Grgić and Guskić, 2019; Richtig et al ., 2019; Swanberg et al ., 2020). Accordingly, their proliferation may undermine the OA model and the credibility of even legitimate OA journals, and thereby endanger scholarly publishing (Eriksson and Helgesson, 2018; Dalton et al ., 2020).…”