Predatory Publications in the Era of the Internet and Technology: Open Access Publications are at Risk

Abstract

This article is intended to highlight the issue of predatory journals and how they have been used to degrade the open-access journals to be perceived as predatory ones. Since many of the predatory journals are available for readers free of cost over the internet (which is among one of the many features of open-access journals/publications), the international wave of the scientific community against predatory journals stigmatized and victimized the entire open-access model of scientific publication to be perceived as substandard quality. This article critically analyzes the definitions of predatory journals and identified key characteristics of predatory journals. It is observed that lack of peer-review and charging high Article Processing Charges (APC) from authors are the two most common features of predatory journals, whereas open-access journals strictly adhere to peer-review criteria and have a clear guideline and information about the article processing fee. Knowingly or unknowingly, several authors mentioned that predatory journals are mostly open access, an overgeneralization of the author pay model upon which open access lies. Peer-review is an essential component of open access journals but not predatory journals; thus, considering predatory journals under the broad notion of open-access model of publication is unfair, stigmatizing and victimizing the open-access journals and keeping them at risk of degradation. Associating open-access journals with predatory ones is a nuisance as both have different aims, modus-operandi, and quality concerns. Therefore, there is a dire need to make policies to discourage predatory practices without victimizing the noble idea of open-access journals/publications. Keywords: open access, predatory journals, article processing charges, peer-review

Legal Incentives and Constraints on Innovation: Keeping the Balance

“…The criticisms of the Open Access movement often use Beall's lists and his paradigm for a predatory journal as well as his bias against the Open Access model (p 9). Kumar et al (2022) argue that open access publications are at risk of predatory publications in the internet era and argue for a universally accepted definition of a predatory journal (90). In response to their article, Papanikos (2022) argues that the whole discussion around predatory journals is specious and that the only test that should be that a journal is "demanded" ie "academics read it and researchers submit papers to be considered for publication".…”

The Danger of Predator Journal Publication for Researchers

“…The definition or notion of a predatory journal was first used by Jeffrey Beall, a librarian from the University of Colorado Denver in the United States (Beall, 2012). From his statement, then the use of the term Predator Journal is something that is often discussed and discussed in the academic world as well as researchers who publish scientific papers on various pages of journal websites, especially journals that have the characteristics of open access (Open Access) to their readers (Kumar, Gupta, Tripathi & Singh, 2022). One of the characteristics of a predatory journal is having a website page that looks "official" and then displays information that is "luring" researchers to be able to publish journal articles in a short time (Agarwal & Bhandari, 2022).…”